Your original comment was questioning why a 24% VAT is considered to be outstandingly high. It's the highest rate of VAT in the EU, and broadly speaking taxes in the EU are already higher than in nations of equivalent technological and economic development. So, it's not an unreasonable feeling that a 24% VAT rate is high.

That 30% tax burden for the US is from the same wikipedia page as the European tax burdens. I am assuming that the methodologies used to arrive at the figures are broadly comparable.