By that argument you might as well add VAT paid by your employers customer as well. It's a specious argument, because these amounts are not part of what you negotiate or put in your contract, and when these rates change your employer is on the hook for them, not you.

It further only tend to be included when complaining about high tax countries, and conveniently forgotten when people compare w/e.g. US taxation.

Nevertheless, even with them included, only a few European countries have total tax wedges above 50% for more than small portions of the population.

> By that argument you might as well add VAT paid by your employers customer as well.

If you make money by your labor hours directly being billed and the buyer of those hours pays VAT on that labor, then I agree.

So long as there’s a direct and 100% link between your labor and the taxed amount, it’s value you created and was taxed away, without regard to who stroked the check to the tax authorities.

Why caveat it like that? Why not include other taxes paid by the employer, all of which affect what they can afford to pay you.

It's irrelevant to me, because it's not a tax on your contracted income.

You can make an argument that it is tax.on the value you created, sure, but not on your income because for most employees there is no direct link between value created and income.

You’re looking at it as tax on contracted income. Which is a consistent lens to use.

I’m looking at it as a tax on direct labor. Which is also a consistent lens to use.

That's fine, but in this context the comment I first replied to above talked about tax rates on salary not on labor.

However, my initial claim that only a small portion of people in Europe approaches 50% holds for total tax wedge as well.

You misread what I was saying.

I’m talking about taxes that have a direct relationship to your income. If your income changes and the taxes paid change in proportion to your income change then that should be counted as taxed against your income.

Doesn’t matter if you call it labor, wage, salary.

You might have been talking about that, but that was not what I was talking about, nor what the person I replied to originally was talking about, and so it's not particularly relevant.