Don't you think that paying 10-40 percentage points more (like in Europe) of your wage each month has something to do with it?
The typical educated European makes 30k a year. 40-45% in taxes right off the bat. That makes the take home to be around 18k.
Sales tax is around 20% throughout Europe. That takes it from 18k to 16k.
Gas is double the price solely because of taxes
Property tax can increase the housing cost by 10%
Automobile property taxes are outrageous compared to the US. New vehicle registration tax can reach 150% in Denmark (if the car costs 30k, pay 45k to the state), but are pretty high everywhere. In Romania, to register a 10 year old car with a 2.4 liter engine you have to pay 6000 euros. In a country with the average wage 1000 a month.
I find it so amusing that people think taxes are just an inconvenience.
By the way, if you want to pay more, you can just donate your money to charities: you have a higher impact than giving it to government, much better directed at what you care about, very easy to do. Donate 10-20% of your raw income to an ngo, then talk about doing that for everyone, compulsory.
Donating my income is besides the point, as it's the top income brackets that really need to be taxed. I would and do happily vote for higher taxes on myself when the option is available.
The U.S. collected 10% of its GDP in taxes in 2020 [1]; France and Italy did about 25%, Germany 11.5%. (Switzerland and "communist" China clock in below 10%.)
There is sufficient variation in tax policy across the EU, let alone Europe, to make broad-based comparisons meaningless.
[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS?most_... a more-expansive definition from the Fed raises this to 16% [a]
Overall it's 38%: https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-germany.pdf
For the US you're missing some taxes, too because the overall is somewhere near 30%, 10 percentage points lower than Germany. I think your US link does not include state and local taxes etc
This is incorrect (despite the citation).
Federal tax collection in 2020 was about 16% of GDP
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S
The OECD reports "The tax-to-GDP ratio in the United States has decreased from 28.3% in 2000 to 24.5% in 2019."
https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-united-states.pd...
For comparison, the weighted average in other OECD countries is about 34%.
Drivel.
Here in Norway (widely reputed to be heavily taxed) a single person earning 30 kUSD and having neither debts nor savings would pay 4752 USD in tax, about 15%. You would then pay up to 25% VAT on things you buy (less on food and rent).
See https://skattekalkulator2018.app.skatteetaten.no/?aar=2020&a...
Pretty much nowhere in Europe you're paying (effective) 40% on a 30k/yr salary. Nowhere. You're most likely not even reaching that tax level.
> New vehicle registration tax can reach 150% in Denmark
> Private cars: 25% of DKK 65,000, 85% of DKK 65,000-202,200 and 150% of the rest. https://skat.dk/skat.aspx?oid=2244599
So again you don't know how tax bands work (and Denmark is kinda of an exception)
Sure, it's "VAT" - but it's essentially the same thing. You pay it for almost everything you buy. There are some lower rates for food in some places. But guess what, US has that too.
> Nowhere
(it's also possible that social security is deductible before income tax is levied as per this site but I'm not looking too deeply into it: https://expatcenter.ro/tax-guide/ )
Also, if I get the linked calculator right, then it expects you to put MONTHLY salary, in RONs, not EUR. So, just putting 30000 there you get a monthly salary of over 6000 EUR, or 72k per year. And that's taxed at 41%.
In other countries you might have tax brackets, but I know from experience that it's very easy to reach 45% total tax rate (not marginal).
e.g. try Belgium, at 100k the state gets 50% https://www.belgiumtaxcalculator.com/?salary=100000&average=...
Try UK. At 50k you pay "only" 26%, but then in the US you pay almost nothing, if you have a family with kids and use the deductions smartly.
> but then in the US you pay almost nothing
Well, not really. In NY that would be 27% (converted). And you pay 31% at $100k in NY (or 34% in 150k ) https://smartasset.com/taxes/new-york-tax-calculator
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...