I guess if you live in a high income tax state, make more than the AMT threshold, max out your 401k and health insurance, etc. and compare your employer's cost

I guess if you live in a high income tax state, make more than the AMT threshold, max out your 401k and health insurance, etc. and compare your employer's cost to employ you by what gets deposited in your bank account at the end of the month, you can end up with a number like this. I agree that it's misleading, because your 401k, health insurance, etc. aren't taxes, and neither is your employer's payroll tax (for you anyway), but on some level it makes sense -- $200,000 a year leave your employer's bank account, and $100,000 a year ends up in yours. It's misleading to call that a 50% tax, but more like 50% overhead-some-of-which-goes-to-the-government-and-some-of-it-pays-for-other-peoples-healthcare-and-some-of-it-makes-up-for-how-useless-social-security-will-be-when-you-retire. That's a mouthful, so I can see why people map that to "tax" in their mind ;) BTW, reading some of the other comments in this thread -- they point out property tax and sales tax. Good call.