Sorry America, Your Taxes Aren't High (bloomberg.com)

Americans generally feel they're being over-taxed, especially around this time of the year. But is that really true? An article on Bloomberg investigates: The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development analyzed how 35 countries tax wage-earners, making it possible to compare tax burdens across the world's biggest economies. Each year, the OECD measures what it calls the "tax wedge," the gap between what a worker gets paid and what they actually spend or save. Included are income taxes, payroll taxes, and any tax credits or rebates that supplement worker income. Excluded are the countless other ways that governments levy taxes, such as sales and value-added taxes, property taxes, and taxes on investment income and gains. Guess who came out at the top of the list? No. Not the U.S. At the top are Belgium and France, while workers in Chile and New Zealand are taxed the least. America is in the bottom third.

Comments

Taxes are for dummies

[Anonymous Coward]

Smart people like Trump never pay them.

Re:Taxes are for dummies

[arglebargle_xiv]

That depends on what you value. If you value having 19 nuclear aircraft carrier groups which enable the ability to interfere in anybody's business anywhere in the world pretty much at a moment's notice, US taxes are quite reasonable.

It's still pretty unreasonable. Scandinavians have lutfisk and surstromming and rakfisk and other unspeakable weapons, which scare me a lot more than some floating airstrip does, and are much better value for money. So it's not how much money you have, it's how you spend it.

Relativity

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but you've only been stabbed in an artery, so it's not actually bad compared to this guy was was shot in the face.