Realistic example of where I live: if gross salary is 100,000 €, the employer pays around 120 k€ (including payroll taxes) and the take-home pay after taxes is 57,610 €.
So the employee gets a little less than half of what the employer pays.
(>100 k€ is the bracket of top 1.6 % of employees.)
There's a handy calculator at the tax office pages: http://prosentti.vero.fi/VPL2016/Sivut/LaskennanTulos.aspx?k...
The nominal percentage however excludes social "insurances" which are effectively taxes.
Overall, taxation is very simple for a regular employee; typically the pay-as-you-earn system takes your taxes during the year and in next February you get a slip detailing the income of last year. Most years I don't need to file a tax return at all because the PAYE system has done it correctly. There are very few deductions to apply.
There are some other items where taxes are noticeably higher than in the US. Gasoline costs around 1.35 €/l (5.66 $/gal).
General VAT is 24 %.