You are confusing marginal and effective tax rate, a very common mistake. At $150k you pay only 29%+12% on each additional dollar, but your earlier dollars were

You are confusing marginal and effective tax rate, a very common mistake. At $150k you pay only 29%+12% on each additional dollar, but your earlier dollars were taxed much less. https://www.taxtips.ca/calculators/basic/basic-tax-calculator.htm https://www.taxtips.ca/calculators/basic/basic-tax-calculato... is a good resource - it shows that your effective tax rate in Ontario on $150k gross is 30.3%. You probably also contribute 18% to your RRSP on that huge salary, which drops your effective tax rate to about 27.4%. Also, you aren't paying 13% VAT on everything you buy - lots is exempt like food and your mortgage/rent. Even if you spend every dollar of your net income, VAT is probably closer to 8% of your total net income (which is 72.6% of your gross, so 5.8% of your gross going to VAT). CPP and EI total $3754 in 2020, so that's another 2.5% total. So that's a total of 35.8% tax on your gross salary. Also note it's much less if you have any common deductions, like children, dependents, education expenses, etc.