Quote:
Originally Posted by DirtyWhiteBoy
Dude, if you are serious, you need to find another account to take care of you. No fucking way in hell should ANYONE be paying 60% of their income to those crooks.
For every $100 you earn, YOU EARN, you pay them $60 of it. That is madness and flat out robbery.
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It is the law and, thank you, I know enough about accounting. No accountant can change the way it is, only politicians. We have a progressive personal income tax starting at about 50% and max is about 60%. Additionally there is 8% "employment" tax before calculating net income tax, so it is might be a little higher than 60%. Also, most products and services have 25% VAT
However, many things are deductable, for both companies and private, and we do not have to worry much about paying for things like medical care and education.
I agree that a lot of it is robbery. We need efficiency to lower the costs and more pay per service, to avoid speculations in working. But even with a right wing government in this millenia, not much has changed really. They implemented more privatization of the "softer" public sector, stricter administration and re-structured the system, but the costs of this exceeds the savings
And we waste money on things like war and non-existant terrorism.
I guess in the end, you can say we are caught in old socialist system and we can't get out of it. President Obama has used us as "great" example for implementing taxes on issues like medical care and environment, but much of it is based on lies or manipulated statistics from our politicians. Not that the problems are really there, but they lie about solving these problems... We are caught in the system, but no one can't admit that is a problem, regardless of political color. To answer the OPs question, I'd say we could have the same welfare with 30-35% taxes if the citizens have the will and to "let it go" what they are used to.