If you look at taxation as a percentage of GDP, the U.S. comes out relatively low overall. For example, total tax revenues are 28% of GDP, and corporate-tax revenues are 3.3% of GDP; both figures are higher in Ireland, meaning that Irish taxation overall takes a bigger bite out of the Irish economy than U.S. taxation does out of the U.S. one.
Data on that last point: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/48/27/41498733.pdf
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2010/03/taxes-per-person.html see also http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=4626
In other words, the US govt gets enough money to provide the services of "high tax" countries but doesn't manage to do so.
Example - the US govt's health care spending per resident is about equal to that of countries with single payer yet the US govt doesn't even try to cover everyone. Instead, most of those residents pay for their own healthcare....