the big problem in Italy are taxes, I pay 38%, but for more than 55k you pay 41%, how politicians pretend Italy can survive? In Switzerland you pay 16%.
In fact the actual % is around 35% on 75k euro income, and it doesn't reach 41% until around 200k euro (where the marginal rate is 43%).
In the US, if you earned $50k you'd have a federal income tax around 15%, plus a state income tax (around 5% for California), plus possibly a municipal income tax (around 3% for New York City for example). We're already at 23% and you're getting much worse healthcare than in Italy (even assuming your employer is paying for it, which is not a given) and hardly any retirement plan.
If you're employed the problem is that Italian wages are low (especially in IT), not that taxes are high. Really, taxes in Italy are only high for self-employed people.
My impression is that the whole system is willingly structured in an overly complicated way, with taxes split between several payers and several taxable bases, so that you cannot know how much of your income are paying.
Also, the taxation is really similar between employees and self-employed workers; it's just that the latter have a marginally better grasp on how much they're paying.
Because according to this [1] HSBC advice, these were the tax bands in force from 2013:
2013 National Income Tax Rates Taxable Income Band € National Income Tax Rates
1 – 15,000 23%
15,001 – 28,000 27%
28,001 – 55,000 38%
55,001 – 75,000 41%
75,001 + 43%
That does in fact place Italy quite high, but OECD ranks Italy below Belgium, Austria, Germany and Hungary in overall tax wedge amongst OECD countries [2] (note that if the numbers look surprising, it is because the OECD is ranking based on total tax wedge including employers social security payments, which often seems weird if you're used to comparing based on the contracted salary - these tax rates are not the percentage paid on the salary in your employment contract, but by the sum of your salary and the employers contributions). Looking only at the actual income tax, it'd rank much lower - it's not a particularly high income tax level relative to the average income.
Switzerland is low in proportion in large part because its overall income levels are very high, and it's income from other sources is very high.
The bigger problem in Italy seems to me to be that you have on of the least progressive income systems I've seen, so low earners gets hit particularly hard.
[1] http://www.expat.hsbc.com/1/PA_ES_Content_Mgmt/content/hsbc_...
[2] http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/taxatio...
There are other mechanisms to make things more progressive. These include special regimes for low income self-employed people and extra returns keyed on stuff such as children (which progressively reduce and finally disappear as your income grows). You end up not paying taxes at all unless you earn at least ~8,000 euros. On a 30k euro income (about average for a secretary with 10 years experience) the overall final rate is around 23-24%.
FWIW, income taxes are 40 % for income above ~32k, and the UK are not considered heavily taxed in Europe.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rates-and-allowan...
And then of course, you need to compare the services you get for the money the state take from you (e.g. in the UK, state pension is close to nothing so you need to remove 15-20 % of your pre-tax income, and then you need to consider mediocre health system, expensive child care, etc...).
Taxes can be low if everyone (no matter their size, big or small) pay them.
$100,000 income at 20% tax = $20,000
$35,000 income at 40% tax = $14,000
Switzerland's median income is between 2.5 and 3 times that of Italy. They have a smaller black market economy than Italy, so they're likely deriving a higher actual share of taxation out of it.
Further, the 16% referenced isn't complete. If you cap out the federal income tax in Switzerland, it's more likely you're paying a total of closer to 25-30% in income taxes (depending on what part of the country you're in), between federal, cantonal and municipal income taxes.
Also there are lots of hidden costs. Health insurance and mandatory unemployment insurance etc. A lot of stuff is pushed onto the private sector but made mandatory, so you have to buy it.
Gross income CHF 120'000 minus deductions you end up with 100K taxable income and the total tax burden (federal, cantonal and communal) is about 11K.
Edit: the same example for a canton with higher taxes (Bern) gives a total tax burden of 22K
[0] http://www.estv2.admin.ch/e/dienstleistungen/steuerrechner/s...