in the US, W2 wage income tax withholding is more or less invisible to the employee to the extent that most people view their tax refund as a bonus rather than

in the US, W2 wage income tax withholding is more or less invisible to the employee to the extent that most people view their tax refund as a bonus rather than the tip of the iceberg of taxes they've been paying. When you work consulting with a 1099 you suddenly realize how much money you need to fork over to feed the beast. (I suspect changing this aspect of the law would really swell the size of anti-tax political parties.) I point this out to say it's not so simple as to say "who pays" what tax. US retirement social security and unemployment insurance and employer health plans may map onto european social security costs paid by employers, but if the cost to employers is variable wrt number of employees it would be fair to call it "paying taxes for employees" (and especially when you consider that in some continental language families "for" and "per" are the same word ;) because it has a very similar price elasticity effect on the labor market