> Tax burden in Germany for middleclass is at around 70%. Beeing a software engineer in germany means that you code 8months for the government and 4months for yourself.

> The western governments introduced more and more “hidden” taxes. So just looking at income tax is not fair.

Please don't pluck figures like that out of thin air - I worked in Berlin as a developer and I easily took home ~60% of my monthly salary (placing tax at around 40%).

Those taxes already comprise of Social Security* (roughly 20%) and income tax (the remainder 20%).

* Health, Retirement, Unemployment etc.

You’re not counting VAT which is 19% of most of what you purchase. Corporate tax is largely bundled into consumer prices as well, and depending on your consumption patterns, and transportations choices there are other taxes that apply. In no way is this list exhaustive.

A good way to normalize it for comparison is tax income as a proportion of GDP[0]

The table on wikipedia[1] shows Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden at all over 50%. Germany at 44.5% while the UK is 34.4%, Australia at 34.3% and United States at 26%

[0] https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=REV#

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_reven...

There's also the compulsory 9% Church Tax in Germany, unless you formally renounce your religion:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/113...

Notably: "The changes include German banks now having to withhold the tax on capital gains of account-holders who are church members."

It's 8-9% of your income tax – so in reality maybe 2% of your income or less.

This tax is levied by the churches. You may be against the fact that they get this right because you support a more strict separation of church and state (which is not in the spirit of the German constitution) but this is hardly something the state is to blame for.

It's opt out, which is pretty evil. You can absolutely blame the state for that.

https://www.settle-in-berlin.com/stop-paying-german-church-t...

It is not opt-out. Everybody who pays has opted into the system (or in most cases their parents did[0]). Catholic foreigners might be surprised that the Catholic church is considered a single world-wide religious community. If they move to Germany they will be taxed even if they are not religious (because they haven't left – which is in some countries hard or impossible). This is a thing the Catholic church does to their members, not the German state.

[0]: It is not a regular contract but even those can bind you if your parents entered into them in your name.

You immigrate to Germany as an atheist with no affiliation to any church, but answer questions about your upbringing truthfully.

You're then taxed 2% of your gross income unless you pay a fee and visit multiple government departments. The money is distributed to private parties with little oversight on its spending. This is enforced by the same body and with the same penalties and rules as other forms of taxation.

I think at this point, we're arguing about the definitions of "opt out" and "enforced by the state". "Evil" is open to interpretation, but I stand by it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/41305s/church_tax_...

It's exactly what I said above: The Roman Catholic church is a single world-wide entity and if you become member in one country your rights and duties carry over to Germany if you move here.

> but answer questions about your upbringing truthfully

Whether or not you answer questions truthfully has no impact on taxation. You might get around paying it if you lie but you are still liable for the tax.

> same penalties and rules as other forms of taxation

It is not, here is a decent publicly available primer: https://www.hrr-strafrecht.de/hrr/archiv/08-08/index.php?sz=... In short: The usual tax offences don't apply to church tax.

> Mit der Aufnahme der persönlichen Daten bei der Behörde werden die Betreffenden u.a. nach ihrem Religionsstatus gefragt. Die Frage der Verwaltungsbeamten lautet nicht etwa: „Sind Sie Mitglied der „Körperschaft des Öffentlichen Rechts Katholische Kirche Deutschland“? Das wäre korrekt. Auf diese Frage würden sie zutreffend mit Nein antworten, denn sie wurden in ihrem Heimatland getauft und nicht in Deutschland.

> Der Verwaltungsbeamte fragt stattdessen, in Unkenntnis der Sachlage, einfach: „Sind Sie katho-lisch?“, oder „Sind sie getauft?“ Die Betroffenen erkennen nicht die mit der Frage verbundene deutsch-katholische Problematik und antworten mit Ja, wenn sie jemals getauft wurden. Daraufhin wird vom Verwaltungsbeamten das entsprechende Konfessionsmerkmal in den Akten vermerkt. Diese Zuerkennung des Etiketts „kath.“ führt dazu, dass die Betroffenen von diesem Zeitpunkt an von der staatlichen Verwaltung als Mitglieder der „Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts Katholische Kirche Deutschland“ geführt werden – mit allen Konsequenzen.

https://hpd.de/node/14728

They ask if you're baptized, which can be true if you're an atheist. This saddles you with a tax obligation that you must then opt out of even though you're a member of no religion. The tax is collected by the state.

Ich denke, dass Sie nur streiten wollen. Es ist genug für mich.

Sorry, that page is a complete misinterpretation of the actual laws. This question is only of declaratory nature of already established facts and has no influence on the actual taxation status (if it ever becomes a court case that is thoroughly examined). You do not become a member of a religious entity by answering a question there (the state has no power at all to decide to admitting new members) – mistakes made while filling the form are always curable. It's the same thing as with marriage status on the same form: You do not simply become married by answering a question there wrongly nor can you claim tax benefits by doing so.

There is no difference between the "Körperschaft des Öffentlichen Rechts Katholische Kirche Deutschland" and the worldwide catholic church. That's a single entity.

(I say that as a non-religious person that never has been a member of a religious entity. If a community decides to tax its members they should be free to.)

Ahh, I didn't realize it was a percentage of income tax. It was explained to me by Germans as tithing, according to the idea of donating 10% of your annual income to the church.

I'm not necessarily for or against it, and it does seem pragmatic for the government to automatically collect it on the church's behalf. The part that does seem strange to me is that you have to renounce your religion to opt out of the automatic deduction, but I understand it's a cultural difference. I'm more used to the idea of contributions as voluntary.

(I'm not German or religious, just an Australian who is a fan of Berlin & Germany and often considers moving there.)

You don’t have to “renounce” your religion or anything to that affect, it’s a checkbox on your income tax / wage form where you choose whether you wish to pay it or not. From what I remember it amount to taking ~1% or so off your salary.

You actually have go through a formal renunciation process (which is done at a state authority but your church will get notified and will not be pleased). That checkbox doesn't actually do anything, it is just your declaration of the official religion status. Lying on tax forms is, well, not the best idea.

Ah I see - I moved over as a foreigner (no previous religious affiliations) so that’s probably why I didn’t have to do anything beyond the taxation declaration.

You still have to officially renounce your church membership if you're member of either the catholic or protestant church. Otherwise the church may at some point come and recoup past taxes for up to 10 years.

Formally renouncing your religion is easy and can be done fairly quickly, I've done it.

The 9% are on the income tax, e.g. 9% of 40% not on income.

so .. 59% tax then?

You can't just add the percentages for income tax and VAT. If you were to combine a 40% income tax and a 19% VAT, you'd end up with 49.6% effective tax. (1-(1-0.40)/1.19)

(I'm not arguing that this naive computation makes sense, you pay different VAT rates or no VAT at all, depending on what you buy. I don't think you have to pay VAT on rent, which is a significant part of the income for many people and reduced VAT on most groceries)

For the middle-class the estimates are that about 8% of your income goes to VAT.

Thanks! My brain kinda failed me there :)

I imagine that he/she is also including VAT in that 70% figure (which I believe is currently 23% in Germany).

In Munich my taxes on my pay check were around 45% as a software dev (including pension & insurance). So 70% total tax might not be far off the mark (assuming that you spend most of your income on VAT goods & services). Although you have to remember it's not 23% of your totoal income, but 23% of the remaining 55%.

There are also other hidden taxes though - import duty, corporation tax and council tax (cant remember if that was a thing in Germany), to name a few.

It's 19% for most stuff and 7% for some other stuff, on average it's closer to 16 o 17% on everything you buy and pay.

Once you account for the 17% being part of your remaining money, you get an effective incoming VAT tax rate of 8.5% (assuming you keep around 50%, if you keep more, this goes up)

I believe the highest amount of income tax you pay is around 60%, plus 8.5% you get close to 70%. However, most people will pay closer to 45 and 50% tax or less so a more realistic figure is 50% to 60% income tax.

It should probably also be included when you get benefits from things paid for in part by this, ie your insurances and pensions and such.

The highest amount of income tax you pay (Reichensteuer) is 47,48% (45% plus Soli). This number is a bit misleading though since the tax rate is a curve that starts at 14% for incomes above 8656 EUR and reaches a plateau of 42% at a yearly income of roundabout 53000 EUR. The highest tax rate only applies to the part of the income that exceeds about 250000 EUR. So the first 8k are tax free, for every EUR above that you pay a tax rate according to the curve and only the part of the income that exceed 250000 EUR pays the full 45%. So if you have a yearly income of 250001 EUR, the 45% get only levied on 1 EUR. It's obvious that the effective tax rate is far lower than 45% for any income that does not massively exceed 250k.

The blue curve in that graph is the nominal tax rate (Grenzsteuersatz) and the green curve the effective rate: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einkommensteuer_(Deutschland)#...

I was probably misinterpreting/mismathing the wikipedia entry, it's been a while since I seriously dived into german tax law.

Actually, it's 0.23 / 1.23 ~= 18.7% of the remaining 55%.

Keep in mind that what the employer pays is about 120% of your misleadingly labeled gross wage. From my point of view the division into employer and employee contributions to what you call Social Security is quite artificial and thus think that you need to compare the net wage with what the employer actually pays.

For example, say your gross wage is 5k/month, the net wage 2.8k and the employer pays 6k. So you take home about 47% of what the employer pays.

I don't know, both figures seem entirely reasonable to me.

However, looking at the OECD figures for Germany of yearly tax revenue (all types of taxation) per capita (15 kUSD) and yearly average wages (45 kUSD), you'd think 30% was the average tax pressure. It then makes sense that you'd pay slightly more taxes, given that you probably earn more.

What the other person may have referred to is some combination involving the tax wedge (the ratio between labour taxes and labour cost not counting taxes), which is 50% in Germany currently, and was near 55% a few years ago. But that number is not relevant to this discussion...

And you didn't get healthcare, free education for 20+ years, subsidised student loans, retirement money, police, fire department etc. from the state? You really should stop and think what you get from the state before you criticise what the state takes from you.

> You really should stop and think what you get from the state before you criticise what the state takes from you.

And when you're done doing so, and decide that it's not a good deal for the money, then you're told to do it again, and again, until you get the "right" answer the person patronizingly telling you to do so expects.

It's reasonable to have a discussion about the most reasonable, efficient, and appropriate way to fund certain things, as well as whether they should be funded at all, and whether funding them should be mandatory. Such discussions should not be derailed by people simply saying "think about what you get" as though the people participating in them haven't already thought about that just because they come to different conclusions.

History shows us that privatization always ends up being more expensive for the average person, while still providing lower-quality service than the old public system.

Example please? By that line of thinking the Soviet Union must have had the best and cheapest service and products. Also Venezuela should be a total Dream right now without empty stores, starving children, no murder rampage.

I did not in any way imply that a strict top-controlled planned economy system like in the USSR was better. I also did not imply that the current state of chaos in Venezuela is preferable (and that happened due to a bone-headed reliance on a single big export product, which completely collapsed when global oil prices crashed).

I'll amend my statement to "privatization of a functional public system, ostensibly to provide better/cheaper service".

Examples from my own backyard include the Danish State Railways, Ørsted (previously DONG), TDC (previously TeleDanmark, which was previously KTAS, JTAS and Fynsk Telefon) and others.

Were they perfect? No, there was a lot of waste and mismanagement of resources. But as investors came in and demanded rationalization and austerity measures in the name of Holy Profit, customer service and general quality plummeted.

The current state of ISPs/telcos in the US is another good example of privatization gone bad.

The railroad sucks because its an old outdated businessmodel when it comes to personal transport. Only railroadbusiness that make sense is Heave industries and inner city subways. Everything else ist just romantazied waste full bs. So of course these kind if business can only be sustained by wasteful public spending.

What are you even on about? Rail transport is one of the absolute cheapest forms of transport per passenger mile and capacity per hour.

God your socialist are aweful, everytime that fails you guys point it to the random single event that made that whole thing fail and act as if that were some unqie exception. “... single bone headed reliance...”

Please stop posting uncivil, unsubstantive comments. We ban accounts that do that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: since we warned you before and you didn't stop, I've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned on HN, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

Please enlighten us on how the chaos in Venezuela wasn't caused by over-reliance on oil and widespread corruption.

Taxes is traditionally a heated subject.

I think it's unreasonable to express a simple (one-sided) argument within this subject and not expect a one-sided answer from someone.

It is truly a complex subject.

Now, I expect someone to disagree with that statement. :)

One interesting property of the US tax structure is that most of the tangible benefits are mostly funded locally (education for 13 years, police, fire, most roads) which is generally a lower tax rate than the federal taxes (which don't as clearly connect to the services that we all need): especially if you don't consider the >50% of federal money spent on the military to be a good use the federal/state/local divide makes it very visible that the taxes you pay are mostly not going to the services that we need.

That's a little misleading, as a ton of federal dollars come back to the state governments. It seems inefficient (and it is), but it's a way of applying political pressure, and of redistributing money from states with stronger economies to those with weaker economies.

I don't think it is that misleading, the bulk of federal tax dollars are spent at the federal level. More of my net tax dollars go to tanks than schools or roads right?

Healthcare isn’t free in Germany. It’s extortionately expensive.

It is (close to) free if you already pay the contributions we are discussing about here. Note how the post said you get free healthcare if you paid your contributions.

The contributions are not extortionately expensive. It may seem that way if you are healthy, high-earner, and young. But looking at the actual cost of providing healthcare it's pretty competitively priced. Over the lifetime of a person private health insurance is not that much cheaper. You can view the difference as a tax supporting the poor and chronically ill if you like.

> It may seem that way if you are healthy, high-earner, and young.

Interesting tidbit that many people tend to forget about: Health care payments are capped. The maximum monthly income that gets counted is 4425 EUR/month of which about 14% get paid in total. So if you earn 10k a month you effectively pay a lower rate. The effective health care rate drops for high-earners.

It costs about half what the US pays per capita.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...

Any credible calculation[0] puts the tax burden of all groups at 50% at most (and most middle class is not taxed at that number) – including all taxes, contributions, levies, and VAT. You would have to add the employer's contributions to that number (but they are less than 10%).

A better measure would be the tax quota (gross national product divided by all taxes and contributions) which is about 35%. This is the effective rate the state gets for everything it does.

[0]: Such as the RWI study which really can't be accused of downplaying the numbers http://shop.freiheit.org/download/P2@675/96532/A4_Steuern%20...

70%? How do you come up with that?

It's roughly 40.5% for most middle class people. If your salary is 4,000€ per month, you get wired 2,380€ to your bank account. Income tax, social security contributions, retirement contributions etc. already deducted.

You could add 19% VAT for all purchases on your tax burden, but that's not 70%.

Like I said its hidden. E.g. my employe pays around 90k for me of which I only see 78k then they apply Tax, pension, healthcare, mandatory unemployment insurance etc, Im left with around 40k. Then i go and spend it and it again gets taxed with 19%. Many products have beeryax, coffetax etc. higest is petrol tax which is 70%. So If i spend 200€ on petrol an month, 70% is tax. I could go on and on. like I said those tax are hidden.

> Tax burden in Germany for middleclass is at around 70%

Even under a charitable interpretation this is simply wrong.

I suppose you have no first-hand experience, but have read that on social media?

If you're self-employed the tax rate is ~70%, at least for lawyers in germany. Source: My self-employed gf.

And no, she does not earn 5 figures, 4-6k gross per month with 1 part-time employee for the bureaucracy stuff (bills, phone service, faxing, scanning etc.). With a 60 hour week.

Your girlfriend does not pay 70% tax. This is mathematically impossible if you actually look at all tax rates.

No, she doesn't.

You must be counting all kinds of other expenses. Professional insurance or bar membership, for example.

That's just a big lie, it's nowhere to 70%. Besides it will vary depending on your salary, your state and your personal situation (i.e. kids, married, age).

Also worth noting that that tax includes full health insurance.

You can easily calculate your take home pay for Germany here: http://www.parmentier.de/steuer/steuer.htm?wagetax.htm

That’s only income tax, not the total tax burden.

My total tax burden in Germany (Munich) was around 65%-ish, depending on exactly how aggressively you want to factor corporate taxes into consumer prices.

You're almost certainly including social security here, health care and retirement. This is not exactly a fair comparison, as in countries with lower tax burden you have to pay for those yourselves.

34% for a family with one child in Munich, 30.5% on capital gains.

You're implying that government does nothing—or at least nothing positive, which is a specious argument at best.

There's also the most hidden tax of all: inflation.