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You're comparing income tax with sales tax. In the UK, on a salary of £40k (i.e. professional mid-career engineer), before you touch the money, the government

by nagrom 12y ago

You're comparing income tax with sales tax. In the UK, on a salary of £40k (i.e. professional mid-career engineer), before you touch the money, the government takes about 25% for income tax and national insurance. Then, they take 20% of everything else that you spend unless it's non-luxurious foodstuffs, children's clothes or paper books. And, of course, if what you're buying is fuel, they actually take 85% of the price. In addition, you'll pay approximately 2% of the purchase price of a house to the government, and you'll pay approx. one day a month in after-tax income to the local council as a property tax. US has a 30% tax burden, UK has a 40% tax burden. France and Germany have >50% tax burdens. The last three have some form of nationalised healthcare though, which the US does not.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
tartuffe78 12y ago
The US does have medicare and medicaid, which aren't universal but still are nationalized healthcare for a lot of people.
- maaku 12y ago
  Nationalized health insurance, which is a little different.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Isn't that the case in Germany as well?
    - biafra 12y ago
      Health insurance is not payed with collected taxes in Germany. You are paying for it seperately.
  - acveilleux 12y ago
    I live in Quebec and technically I don't have nationalized healthcare but rather health insurance. It doesn't change the fact that I don have to pay anything out of pocket at any hospital I go to here. An itemized and detailed claim will be made on my behalf to the insurance agency to get everything paid. From a user pov it makes no difference how the system works.
    - maaku 12y ago
      Quite the contrary, the level of service can vary wildly in nationalized health care, where the state runs the hospitals. There are pluses and minuses -- you can get much better health care at a much cheaper price to the tax payer, but with all the problems you see in any government bureaucracy. Nationalized insurance on the other hand is pretty much the system any American would be used to, except the government pays and you have long queues.
toomuchtodo 12y ago
> US has a 30% tax burden, UK has a 40% tax burden. France and Germany have >50% tax burdens. The last three have some form of nationalised healthcare though, which the US does not. As a US citizen, I'm happy to have an increased tax burden for legislated vacation/holiday days and 20% of the population not having medical bills they can't pay for.
- fargolime 12y ago
  It's more like 80% of the population, when considering expenses not covered by insurance. A hospital can charge you for anything and you're legally obligated to pay it.
  - pc86 12y ago
    > A hospital can charge you for anything and you're legally obligated to pay it. Categorically, unequivocally wrong. Hospitals cannot just make up charges. They cannot bill you for procedures/tests/services you did not receive (and if they do, you are not "legally obligated to pay it"). I know the anti-US healthcare circle jerk is pretty strong here, but we don't need to just make things up in order to prove a point.
    - _delirium 12y ago
      It's true that they can't just make up services, but they can do a pretty wide range of things and bill you for them, without giving you the price in advance. My dad was in the hospital once, and got something like 20 separate bills, for different services he had no idea he had received (and had no way to verify if he had even received). And my mom actually did get a half-dozen or so bills for services she definitely didn't receive. She went to the ER, checked in, but ended up leaving before getting any services whatsoever: after >1hr waiting in the ER's waiting room, she started calling around to see if she could be seen somewhere else, and left when she found a nearby urgent-care clinic that could see her. They still billed her for a "standard" ER work-up, including line items for a blood test and lab work! She had not had blood drawn, and clearly no lab work was done. Obviously she didn't pay that bill, though: if you really have good evidence that the service was not performed, you can challenge it.
Retric 12y ago
The only important number is government spending as % of GDP. US ~38%, UK ~42%. However the UK has universal heathcare where US simply mandates health insurance making the effective tax burden lower in the UK. In either case the US tax burden is close enough to EU levels not to make a significant difference.
- praptak 12y ago
  > The only important number is government spending as % of GDP. Globally. Still here might be cases where a particular group funds an unproportionally high part of the spending. And you might be the edge case where you earn the money in country A to save and retire on it in country B, so A's sales tax doesn't affect you this much.
legulere 12y ago
Germany doesn't have nationalised healthcare. It's just mandatory for most of the population and the health maintenance organizations are extremely regulated (how much money they should take, in what cases they have to pay how much, ...)
fargolime 12y ago
> The last three have some form of nationalised healthcare though, which the US does not. Plus a much better retirement plan. In the US you can wake up in a hospital after someone rear-ended you, to find you are bankrupt and going to become homeless, even when you had the best insurance. And unless the stock market returns 8% most people are going to have a rough retirement. In the US you're lucky to get 3 weeks vacation a year. More than that, you need to quit your job. In EU countries it's generally 6 weeks by gov't mandate. The greater taxes are probably a good deal.
- b3n 12y ago
  How does the tax rate influence the amount of time you may take off work?
  - fargolime 12y ago
    Not directly, but higher taxes tend to go hand-in-hand with the gov't ensuring a higher average standard of living.
- colechristensen 12y ago
  Things which aren't true: >In the US you can wake up in a hospital after someone rear-ended you, to find you are bankrupt and going to become homeless, even when you had the best insurance. >unless the stock market returns 8% most people are going to have a rough retirement Your health and car insurance covers exactly what it says it covers, and retirement plans aren't a mystery. In America you take personal responsibility for things which are done for you in Europe; you can make the wrong choices, but you're allowed to _make_ choices. Vacation doesn't have much of anything to do with taxes.
  - Wintamute 12y ago
    Brit here. I like to take personal responsibility for choices like career path, holidays, hobbies, where to put down roots, whether to have a family, who to love, who to have sex with, how much to drink, what books to read, what religion to follow or not follow, what to have for dinner. As for how I subsist when I'm too old or sick to work, or when I wake up in hospital after an accident ... those sorts of choices I'm more than happy for the government to make, in general they do a great job all things considered.
humanrebar 12y ago
> You're comparing income tax with sales tax. For the purposes of personal budgeting, I don't see why the comparison is unfair. I'm trying to discuss taxation levels, not tax schemes as such. > US has a 30% tax burden That's more on point. That's also low. It doesn't include state and local income taxes. It also ignores other kinds of taxes like property and sales taxes. The U.S. has state-level taxes, which complicate things but they definitely affect the individual taxpayer.
- nagrom 12y ago
  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.

by nagrom 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

tartuffe78 12y ago

The US does have medicare and medicaid, which aren't universal but still are nationalized healthcare for a lot of people.

maaku 12y ago
Nationalized health insurance, which is a little different.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Isn't that the case in Germany as well?
  - biafra 12y ago
    Health insurance is not payed with collected taxes in Germany. You are paying for it seperately.
- acveilleux 12y ago
  I live in Quebec and technically I don't have nationalized healthcare but rather health insurance. It doesn't change the fact that I don have to pay anything out of pocket at any hospital I go to here. An itemized and detailed claim will be made on my behalf to the insurance agency to get everything paid. From a user pov it makes no difference how the system works.
  - maaku 12y ago
    Quite the contrary, the level of service can vary wildly in nationalized health care, where the state runs the hospitals. There are pluses and minuses -- you can get much better health care at a much cheaper price to the tax payer, but with all the problems you see in any government bureaucracy. Nationalized insurance on the other hand is pretty much the system any American would be used to, except the government pays and you have long queues.

toomuchtodo 12y ago

> US has a 30% tax burden, UK has a 40% tax burden. France and Germany have >50% tax burdens. The last three have some form of nationalised healthcare though, which the US does not. As a US citizen, I'm happy to have an increased tax burden for legislated vacation/holiday days and 20% of the population not having medical bills they can't pay for.

fargolime 12y ago
It's more like 80% of the population, when considering expenses not covered by insurance. A hospital can charge you for anything and you're legally obligated to pay it.
- pc86 12y ago
  > A hospital can charge you for anything and you're legally obligated to pay it. Categorically, unequivocally wrong. Hospitals cannot just make up charges. They cannot bill you for procedures/tests/services you did not receive (and if they do, you are not "legally obligated to pay it"). I know the anti-US healthcare circle jerk is pretty strong here, but we don't need to just make things up in order to prove a point.
  - _delirium 12y ago
    It's true that they can't just make up services, but they can do a pretty wide range of things and bill you for them, without giving you the price in advance. My dad was in the hospital once, and got something like 20 separate bills, for different services he had no idea he had received (and had no way to verify if he had even received). And my mom actually did get a half-dozen or so bills for services she definitely didn't receive. She went to the ER, checked in, but ended up leaving before getting any services whatsoever: after >1hr waiting in the ER's waiting room, she started calling around to see if she could be seen somewhere else, and left when she found a nearby urgent-care clinic that could see her. They still billed her for a "standard" ER work-up, including line items for a blood test and lab work! She had not had blood drawn, and clearly no lab work was done. Obviously she didn't pay that bill, though: if you really have good evidence that the service was not performed, you can challenge it.

Retric 12y ago

The only important number is government spending as % of GDP. US ~38%, UK ~42%. However the UK has universal heathcare where US simply mandates health insurance making the effective tax burden lower in the UK. In either case the US tax burden is close enough to EU levels not to make a significant difference.

praptak 12y ago
> The only important number is government spending as % of GDP. Globally. Still here might be cases where a particular group funds an unproportionally high part of the spending. And you might be the edge case where you earn the money in country A to save and retire on it in country B, so A's sales tax doesn't affect you this much.

legulere 12y ago

Germany doesn't have nationalised healthcare. It's just mandatory for most of the population and the health maintenance organizations are extremely regulated (how much money they should take, in what cases they have to pay how much, ...)

fargolime 12y ago

> The last three have some form of nationalised healthcare though, which the US does not. Plus a much better retirement plan. In the US you can wake up in a hospital after someone rear-ended you, to find you are bankrupt and going to become homeless, even when you had the best insurance. And unless the stock market returns 8% most people are going to have a rough retirement. In the US you're lucky to get 3 weeks vacation a year. More than that, you need to quit your job. In EU countries it's generally 6 weeks by gov't mandate. The greater taxes are probably a good deal.

b3n 12y ago
How does the tax rate influence the amount of time you may take off work?
- fargolime 12y ago
  Not directly, but higher taxes tend to go hand-in-hand with the gov't ensuring a higher average standard of living.
colechristensen 12y ago
Things which aren't true: >In the US you can wake up in a hospital after someone rear-ended you, to find you are bankrupt and going to become homeless, even when you had the best insurance. >unless the stock market returns 8% most people are going to have a rough retirement Your health and car insurance covers exactly what it says it covers, and retirement plans aren't a mystery. In America you take personal responsibility for things which are done for you in Europe; you can make the wrong choices, but you're allowed to _make_ choices. Vacation doesn't have much of anything to do with taxes.
- Wintamute 12y ago
  Brit here. I like to take personal responsibility for choices like career path, holidays, hobbies, where to put down roots, whether to have a family, who to love, who to have sex with, how much to drink, what books to read, what religion to follow or not follow, what to have for dinner. As for how I subsist when I'm too old or sick to work, or when I wake up in hospital after an accident ... those sorts of choices I'm more than happy for the government to make, in general they do a great job all things considered.

humanrebar 12y ago

> You're comparing income tax with sales tax. For the purposes of personal budgeting, I don't see why the comparison is unfair. I'm trying to discuss taxation levels, not tax schemes as such. > US has a 30% tax burden That's more on point. That's also low. It doesn't include state and local income taxes. It also ignores other kinds of taxes like property and sales taxes. The U.S. has state-level taxes, which complicate things but they definitely affect the individual taxpayer.

nagrom 12y ago
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.