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Im a dual US and Swiss Citizen. My taxes are lower in Switzerland. Of course I still have to pay the difference back to the US, but that's not the point. Swi

Im a dual US and Swiss Citizen. My taxes are lower in Switzerland. Of course I still have to pay the difference back to the US, but that's not the point. Switzerland has such a great infrastructure because they have been making steady, incremental investments over a long time. They accept that a project can have a very long payback period. Also, they invest to keep their infrastructure very well maintained, which keeps utility high and makes major overhauls less frequent, thus extending the duration that they benefit from their original big investment. So I think you don't need high taxes, but rather a long term outlook and the will to execute it, across multiple election cycles. Boston's Big Dig is the most recent example of such a project from the US that I can think of.

jcfrei 11y ago
I'm pretty sure though that Switzerland spends - relatively speaking - much more on public transportation than the US (if I looked it up correctly it's about 8.7% for CH and 1.2% for the US on the federal budget). After all the terrain is more demanding (alps, etc.) and the density of the network is much higher.
- Tepix 11y ago
  Maybe it's because spends a huge amount on military instead?
harryh 11y ago
US Taxes as a % of GDP: 26.9 Switzerland: 29.4 (or about 9% higher) I obviously cannot comment on your particular tax situation but it is not representative of the country as a whole.
- sebgr 11y ago
  The average Swiss citizen will earn more than your average american - overall swiss citizens will pay a smaller % on taxes than americans.
  - harryh 11y ago
    Um, no. 29.4 is > 26.9 no matter what the average earnings are.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - jrock08 11y ago
      Let me try to explain with a very very simple example why the average person might pay less, even though the average tax might be higher. Person 1-10 make $10. Person 11 makes $100 Case 1, a flat tax of 30% Person 1-10 pay $3, person 11 pays $30, for a total tax of $60 on $200 total income, that is 30%. Case 2, a progressive tax of 1% on income up to $10, and a tax of 80% above that. Person 1-10 pay $1, Person 11 pays 1% on $10 and pays 80% on $90 which is $72, a total tax of $82 on $200 income, a 41% tax!!!
  - sebgr 11y ago
    It seems OP was referring to tax as % of ones income and you are talking taxes as % of GDP is what I was trying to get at.
  - david927 11y ago
    As an American who lived for a decade in Zurich, I can confirm that the Swiss pay less in taxes. The big difference is that, in Switzerland, the rich pay taxes.
    - maxxxxx 11y ago
      Unless they are Formula 1 drivers from another country :-)
- mhb 11y ago
  Maybe it's not a huge factor and I don't know how this comes into the picture, but when I visited Switzerland the cost of food was insanely high.
  - nickik 11y ago
    That does not matter if you talk about it in % of GDP.
  - saiya-jin 11y ago
    this is natural in a country where overall salaries are higher (somehow cashiers in stores also have higher salaries, rent is higher etc.). dining out is especially expensive, but as with all, we can choose how to spend our paychecks
- m_mueller 11y ago
  I think what people are missing here is what's left on the table, at the end of a day, for your normal, low to mid level employee, after having paid taxes, insurances and transport to and from work. Swiss pay on average around 300 USD per month for full health coverage and have an average salary of somewhere around 5800 USD, at the low end it starts around 3800 USD. Pension system is in the single digit percentages, as is the few other social insurances we have. Cars are expensive to run, around USD 10k a year. A yearly all-included general public transport subscription (public and private operators of bus, train, ships, mountain cable cars, street cars in all of Switzerland) costs around USD 3000 per year. If you live close to a city it's only around USD 700 a year. So all in all even an average worker can still feed a family of 3-4 people on a single job from 8 to 5 if he takes the public transport and lives somewhere a bit less expensive.
  - harryh 11y ago
    Indeed! I was making no comment on the quality of life in Switzerland which is clearly excellent. They have one of the highest GPDs per capita in the world (especially if you exclude a couple of the oil producers that exceed it). I was merely commenting on the fact that Switzerland does, in fact, have taxes that are higher than what we have in the US.
    - m_mueller 11y ago
      Yes, my comment also wasn't meant as a disprove of something you wrote, I just wanted to add the big picture. Edit: I guess the point I'm trying to make: Switzerland is not all that different from the US (on a small scale), it just combines a moderate amount of corporate liberties with enough personal liberties to strike a good balance. In many ways it's like the Libertarian's small government, locally organized model, it just adds enough social and health insurance safety nets and a good public infrastructure on top. Think every county having their own tax law, school system, road network etc.
    - sambe 11y ago
      Switzerland has one of the lowest tax rates in the world (although it varies from canton to canton). Where do you draw the conclusion from?
- eric-hu 11y ago
  Is this factoring in state taxes and social security? I know some states don't have income taxes, but that seems to just be a handful.
- Retric 11y ago
  LOL, sticker tax rates are a joke in poor taste. Look at Total government spending as % GDP (Federal, State, Local). US broke 40% spending to GDP recently. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_brief.php?brief=recent http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_brief.php?brief... Switzerland spends ~31-34% GDP. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/switzerland/government-spending-to-gdp http://www.tradingeconomics.com/switzerland/government-spend... PS: O wait, debt and interest payments don't count... Sorry.
- tobltobs 11y ago
  Source of those numbers, please.
  - harryh 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_reven...
- goodcanadian 11y ago
  Be careful with these comparisons. I can't comment on Switzerland, but when I moved from Canada to the U.S., the percentage of my paycheque that was withheld was almost exactly the same. The reason was that while the taxes are higher in Canada, they include healthcare. In the U.S. medical insurance is a separate line item. It may be technically true that the U.S. has lower taxes, but it is very difficult to make comparisons that take into account all external benefits and costs. It would not surprise me if Switzerland had less money available for transportation even though taxes are technically higher.
  - saiya-jin 11y ago
    Health insurance in Suisse, based on permanent employment: employer is obliged to pay you accident insurance, which covers... accidents, full time. Employee is obliged to find health insurance (basically you get ill), otherwise state will find you one randomly. this is paid by employee from net income. There are various models (GP, doctor on call, semi-private, private etc.), with different franchise, effectively you pay somewhere between 250-500 CHF monthly. Franchise is amount 300-2500 CHF per year that you still pay from your pocket for treatment of illnesses, then insurance kicks in with 100% coverage. Of course the lower the threshold (ie 300), the more you pay per month. Dentists and eye care are almost never covered, only with most expensive ones. FYI CHF=~ USD. Apart from that dental and eye care, probably the best model I've ever seen. Medical care is top notch, hospitals definitely don't lack proper (often expensive) equipment, rather the issue is there is not enough doctors/nurses.
dsfyu404ed 11y ago
The big dig was a feeding trough for any construction contractor with any connections to pad their pockets on the taxpayers dime. When people in other cities complain that raised highways are ugly the civil engineers point to Boston and say "well there's your alternative, take your pick" I'm not disagreeing with your opinion on long term projects but don't hold up the Big Dig as an example of the way things should be. Years later, sure the tunnels are cool but they're expensive and can't be upgraded reasonably (a problem with tunnels in general). The Big plans need to be future proofed, something you can still get utility from even if the big picture changes. Highways in tunnels under cities don't fit that (railways are somewhat of a different story IMO). An expressway that bypasses the city, maybe but a normal highway with exits, no way (IMO). The I/O locations (exits) and volumes of a highway change too frequently to invest to heavily in any particular stretch of highway. I think the culture change that needs to take place isn't the long term outlook but more responsibility with other people's money. You can't have a long term approach to infrastructure while people are trying to squeeze every dollar out of every project. As it stands, the time it takes for something to pay for itself (monetarily, via utility or otherwise) is impractical because the time something like $project stops being "in the red" is long past the time it's a clapped out POS that needs an overhaul. I think it's worth looking at the beginning of the 20th century when large civil engineering projects were more common for insight into the social/political side of things.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- jdblair 11y ago
  The choice "raised or underground highways, take your pick" is a false dichotomy. The correct choice for urban health is to not build the highway in the first place, or to remove intra-city highways. The trouble is that once they are built the demand for their use becomes self-perpetuating. Compare San Francisco and Oakland - SF stopped the building of cross-town freeways in the famous "freeway revolt." Oakland was bi-sected by freeways which destroyed neighborhoods, many of which have still not recovered. The worst is the CA-24/I-980 connector.
tw04 11y ago
Switzerland also spends 0.7% of it's annual GDP on defense spending, vs. 3-5% for the US. If we redirected that towards infrastructure we'd rival the best public transit systems in the world.
- nickik 11y ago
  Thats just pointless argument to make, it serves as nothing other then your personal critic of defense spending. The US already has a significant amount of spending on infrastructure. Instead of finger point at some other expense, you should ask why the current money is not giving you good results. Schooling has the same issue in the US.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    > Thats just pointless argument to make Defense spending is our third largest expense, behind Social Security and Medicare. It's not a pointless argument to make. We should be taking a machete to the military industrial complex welfare state in the US.
    - sslayer 11y ago
      And If that defense spending is used to fund R&D projects that ultimately benefit society, would you still feel the same way? (ARPAPNet for one example?)
      - hollerith 11y ago
        Although the internet was many years ahead of the BBS scene and Fidonet in the sophistication of its technology and its online culture, the BBS scene and Fidonet would have by now become a global network integrated into commerce, government and other aspects of daily life if the internet had not gotten there first. Or the technology behind France's Minitel would have been adopted globally and gotten there. Or something like that.
      - nitrogen 11y ago
        But it's not; it's used instead to send our aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, etc. into dangerous places and stir up geopolitical trouble. How much research could you fund with the price of a single multi-million-dollar gas station in Afghanistan?
secondtimeuse 11y ago
Yeah without US support of NATO there wouldn't be a Switzerland just nuked out mountains flying post WW 3 soviet flag. Or maybe they would fare better considering their sham pro-hitler neutral actions that saw millions of jews perish during holocaust. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/nazis/readings/sinister.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/nazis/readings... Frankly I don't see why HN commenter are so pro tiny European countries which are almost always have sustained due to US military support and are choke full of nativist/racists (Check out white sheep kicking black sheep poster). Be thankful for generous US citizens spending to keep world safe otherwise Europe and Asia would wake up to the next World war within months.
- saiya-jin 11y ago
  other visitors consider your hateful, ignorant and uninformed post not worthy a comment, but I'll bite - you are wrong, sir, and probably know it. Plus that funky part about generous US - the world these days would be a much better place if US would just mind their matters for a while. Switzerland couldn't care less about US either, americans are not preferred expats here now (good luck opening a bank account here due to US government foreign policies for expats). As for tolerance, Switzerland has by far the highest amount of foreigners from whole Europe, and yet it's much safer than any other european country, all religions mixed (ie very strong buddhist community) etc. World could learn a thing or two from this place ;)
  - secondtimeuse 11y ago
    Yes Switzerland has by far highest number of foreigners because of its essentialy Xenophobic immigration system rather than anything else. Using that as an example to show how welcoming it is completely deluded. USA offers birthright citizenship and in near future will offer a path to millions of undocumented immigrants. While USA had its own problem it's light years ahead when it comes to countries like Switzerland, where kids whose parents have lived decades in the country and were born their have no path to citizenship. As far as swiss banks are concerned the world is actually worse off because of corrupt wealth hidden in their accounts. If anything Americans should be happy that one cannot simply open a swiss bank account.

jcfrei 11y ago

I'm pretty sure though that Switzerland spends - relatively speaking - much more on public transportation than the US (if I looked it up correctly it's about 8.7% for CH and 1.2% for the US on the federal budget). After all the terrain is more demanding (alps, etc.) and the density of the network is much higher.

Tepix 11y ago
Maybe it's because spends a huge amount on military instead?

harryh 11y ago

US Taxes as a % of GDP: 26.9 Switzerland: 29.4 (or about 9% higher) I obviously cannot comment on your particular tax situation but it is not representative of the country as a whole.

sebgr 11y ago
The average Swiss citizen will earn more than your average american - overall swiss citizens will pay a smaller % on taxes than americans.
- harryh 11y ago
  Um, no. 29.4 is > 26.9 no matter what the average earnings are.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - jrock08 11y ago
    Let me try to explain with a very very simple example why the average person might pay less, even though the average tax might be higher. Person 1-10 make $10. Person 11 makes $100 Case 1, a flat tax of 30% Person 1-10 pay $3, person 11 pays $30, for a total tax of $60 on $200 total income, that is 30%. Case 2, a progressive tax of 1% on income up to $10, and a tax of 80% above that. Person 1-10 pay $1, Person 11 pays 1% on $10 and pays 80% on $90 which is $72, a total tax of $82 on $200 income, a 41% tax!!!
- sebgr 11y ago
  It seems OP was referring to tax as % of ones income and you are talking taxes as % of GDP is what I was trying to get at.
- david927 11y ago
  As an American who lived for a decade in Zurich, I can confirm that the Swiss pay less in taxes. The big difference is that, in Switzerland, the rich pay taxes.
  - maxxxxx 11y ago
    Unless they are Formula 1 drivers from another country :-)
mhb 11y ago
Maybe it's not a huge factor and I don't know how this comes into the picture, but when I visited Switzerland the cost of food was insanely high.
- nickik 11y ago
  That does not matter if you talk about it in % of GDP.
- saiya-jin 11y ago
  this is natural in a country where overall salaries are higher (somehow cashiers in stores also have higher salaries, rent is higher etc.). dining out is especially expensive, but as with all, we can choose how to spend our paychecks
m_mueller 11y ago
I think what people are missing here is what's left on the table, at the end of a day, for your normal, low to mid level employee, after having paid taxes, insurances and transport to and from work. Swiss pay on average around 300 USD per month for full health coverage and have an average salary of somewhere around 5800 USD, at the low end it starts around 3800 USD. Pension system is in the single digit percentages, as is the few other social insurances we have. Cars are expensive to run, around USD 10k a year. A yearly all-included general public transport subscription (public and private operators of bus, train, ships, mountain cable cars, street cars in all of Switzerland) costs around USD 3000 per year. If you live close to a city it's only around USD 700 a year. So all in all even an average worker can still feed a family of 3-4 people on a single job from 8 to 5 if he takes the public transport and lives somewhere a bit less expensive.
- harryh 11y ago
  Indeed! I was making no comment on the quality of life in Switzerland which is clearly excellent. They have one of the highest GPDs per capita in the world (especially if you exclude a couple of the oil producers that exceed it). I was merely commenting on the fact that Switzerland does, in fact, have taxes that are higher than what we have in the US.
  - m_mueller 11y ago
    Yes, my comment also wasn't meant as a disprove of something you wrote, I just wanted to add the big picture. Edit: I guess the point I'm trying to make: Switzerland is not all that different from the US (on a small scale), it just combines a moderate amount of corporate liberties with enough personal liberties to strike a good balance. In many ways it's like the Libertarian's small government, locally organized model, it just adds enough social and health insurance safety nets and a good public infrastructure on top. Think every county having their own tax law, school system, road network etc.
  - sambe 11y ago
    Switzerland has one of the lowest tax rates in the world (although it varies from canton to canton). Where do you draw the conclusion from?
eric-hu 11y ago
Is this factoring in state taxes and social security? I know some states don't have income taxes, but that seems to just be a handful.
Retric 11y ago
LOL, sticker tax rates are a joke in poor taste. Look at Total government spending as % GDP (Federal, State, Local). US broke 40% spending to GDP recently. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_brief.php?brief=recent http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_brief.php?brief... Switzerland spends ~31-34% GDP. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/switzerland/government-spending-to-gdp http://www.tradingeconomics.com/switzerland/government-spend... PS: O wait, debt and interest payments don't count... Sorry.
tobltobs 11y ago
Source of those numbers, please.
- harryh 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_reven...
goodcanadian 11y ago
Be careful with these comparisons. I can't comment on Switzerland, but when I moved from Canada to the U.S., the percentage of my paycheque that was withheld was almost exactly the same. The reason was that while the taxes are higher in Canada, they include healthcare. In the U.S. medical insurance is a separate line item. It may be technically true that the U.S. has lower taxes, but it is very difficult to make comparisons that take into account all external benefits and costs. It would not surprise me if Switzerland had less money available for transportation even though taxes are technically higher.
- saiya-jin 11y ago
  Health insurance in Suisse, based on permanent employment: employer is obliged to pay you accident insurance, which covers... accidents, full time. Employee is obliged to find health insurance (basically you get ill), otherwise state will find you one randomly. this is paid by employee from net income. There are various models (GP, doctor on call, semi-private, private etc.), with different franchise, effectively you pay somewhere between 250-500 CHF monthly. Franchise is amount 300-2500 CHF per year that you still pay from your pocket for treatment of illnesses, then insurance kicks in with 100% coverage. Of course the lower the threshold (ie 300), the more you pay per month. Dentists and eye care are almost never covered, only with most expensive ones. FYI CHF=~ USD. Apart from that dental and eye care, probably the best model I've ever seen. Medical care is top notch, hospitals definitely don't lack proper (often expensive) equipment, rather the issue is there is not enough doctors/nurses.

dsfyu404ed 11y ago

The big dig was a feeding trough for any construction contractor with any connections to pad their pockets on the taxpayers dime. When people in other cities complain that raised highways are ugly the civil engineers point to Boston and say "well there's your alternative, take your pick" I'm not disagreeing with your opinion on long term projects but don't hold up the Big Dig as an example of the way things should be. Years later, sure the tunnels are cool but they're expensive and can't be upgraded reasonably (a problem with tunnels in general). The Big plans need to be future proofed, something you can still get utility from even if the big picture changes. Highways in tunnels under cities don't fit that (railways are somewhat of a different story IMO). An expressway that bypasses the city, maybe but a normal highway with exits, no way (IMO). The I/O locations (exits) and volumes of a highway change too frequently to invest to heavily in any particular stretch of highway. I think the culture change that needs to take place isn't the long term outlook but more responsibility with other people's money. You can't have a long term approach to infrastructure while people are trying to squeeze every dollar out of every project. As it stands, the time it takes for something to pay for itself (monetarily, via utility or otherwise) is impractical because the time something like $project stops being "in the red" is long past the time it's a clapped out POS that needs an overhaul. I think it's worth looking at the beginning of the 20th century when large civil engineering projects were more common for insight into the social/political side of things.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
jdblair 11y ago
The choice "raised or underground highways, take your pick" is a false dichotomy. The correct choice for urban health is to not build the highway in the first place, or to remove intra-city highways. The trouble is that once they are built the demand for their use becomes self-perpetuating. Compare San Francisco and Oakland - SF stopped the building of cross-town freeways in the famous "freeway revolt." Oakland was bi-sected by freeways which destroyed neighborhoods, many of which have still not recovered. The worst is the CA-24/I-980 connector.

tw04 11y ago

Switzerland also spends 0.7% of it's annual GDP on defense spending, vs. 3-5% for the US. If we redirected that towards infrastructure we'd rival the best public transit systems in the world.

nickik 11y ago
Thats just pointless argument to make, it serves as nothing other then your personal critic of defense spending. The US already has a significant amount of spending on infrastructure. Instead of finger point at some other expense, you should ask why the current money is not giving you good results. Schooling has the same issue in the US.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  > Thats just pointless argument to make Defense spending is our third largest expense, behind Social Security and Medicare. It's not a pointless argument to make. We should be taking a machete to the military industrial complex welfare state in the US.
  - sslayer 11y ago
    And If that defense spending is used to fund R&D projects that ultimately benefit society, would you still feel the same way? (ARPAPNet for one example?)
    - hollerith 11y ago
      Although the internet was many years ahead of the BBS scene and Fidonet in the sophistication of its technology and its online culture, the BBS scene and Fidonet would have by now become a global network integrated into commerce, government and other aspects of daily life if the internet had not gotten there first. Or the technology behind France's Minitel would have been adopted globally and gotten there. Or something like that.
    - nitrogen 11y ago
      But it's not; it's used instead to send our aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, etc. into dangerous places and stir up geopolitical trouble. How much research could you fund with the price of a single multi-million-dollar gas station in Afghanistan?

secondtimeuse 11y ago

Yeah without US support of NATO there wouldn't be a Switzerland just nuked out mountains flying post WW 3 soviet flag. Or maybe they would fare better considering their sham pro-hitler neutral actions that saw millions of jews perish during holocaust. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/nazis/readings/sinister.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/nazis/readings... Frankly I don't see why HN commenter are so pro tiny European countries which are almost always have sustained due to US military support and are choke full of nativist/racists (Check out white sheep kicking black sheep poster). Be thankful for generous US citizens spending to keep world safe otherwise Europe and Asia would wake up to the next World war within months.

saiya-jin 11y ago
other visitors consider your hateful, ignorant and uninformed post not worthy a comment, but I'll bite - you are wrong, sir, and probably know it. Plus that funky part about generous US - the world these days would be a much better place if US would just mind their matters for a while. Switzerland couldn't care less about US either, americans are not preferred expats here now (good luck opening a bank account here due to US government foreign policies for expats). As for tolerance, Switzerland has by far the highest amount of foreigners from whole Europe, and yet it's much safer than any other european country, all religions mixed (ie very strong buddhist community) etc. World could learn a thing or two from this place ;)
- secondtimeuse 11y ago
  Yes Switzerland has by far highest number of foreigners because of its essentialy Xenophobic immigration system rather than anything else. Using that as an example to show how welcoming it is completely deluded. USA offers birthright citizenship and in near future will offer a path to millions of undocumented immigrants. While USA had its own problem it's light years ahead when it comes to countries like Switzerland, where kids whose parents have lived decades in the country and were born their have no path to citizenship. As far as swiss banks are concerned the world is actually worse off because of corrupt wealth hidden in their accounts. If anything Americans should be happy that one cannot simply open a swiss bank account.