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csdreamer7

A little off topic but I decided to look this up.

What would taxes be if we compared the US to Canada?

Using the following two tools: https://simpletax.ca/calculator https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator

For 50k a year in British Colombia for Canada and California for the US I get the following:

BC: $8,372 CA: $11,112

At 100k with 18k contributed to 401k/RRSP the numbers are 17.5K and 25.8k for BC and CA.

Unless I missed typed something because it's late we Americans are getting a raw deal. I realize Canada has VAT, but CA has very high sales taxes and I did not include the cost of an exchange plan. What you are looking is the Income and FICA taxes alone.

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You compared 50k nominal CAD and USD, rather than the same after exchange rate. Googling "50000 usd in cad" gives me $66,280 CAD; plugging that into your first link gives me an after-tax income of $53,317 CAD, which is $40,225 USD, a lot closer to the $38,888 Californian after-tax income.

More importantly, besides VAT (actually called GST in Canada) there's all the employer-side taxes that aren't advertised in a job posting. Try using the self-employment box in your Canadian calculator; for $66,820 CAD in self-employed income in BC, you end up with $48,229 CAD after tax, or only $36,378 USD on $50,000 USD.

That's not really fair or useful either, because the same situation will have all kinds of tax implications in CA as well. My point is more than simply looking at "this is what income tax is in jurisdiction A vs jurisdiction B" is not necessarily reflective of what the tax burden's actually like.

Kind of pointless. The CAD had parity with USD not long ago anyway.

That particular simpletax calculator is weirdly broken -- it seems to ignore payroll taxes. (I say weirdly, because simpletax usually doesn't bungle things like that.) Once you include CPP (Canada's version of Social Security) and Employment Insurance (benefits for unemployed people, but not remotely resembling insurance despite the name), someone earning $50k in BC pays just over $10k... plus another $900/month (more if you're not single) of mandatory tax-but-not-called-a-tax government medical premiums.

So for your hypothetical $50k/year worker, the tax burdens are pretty similar; BC+Canada sales taxes come to 12% which I believe is a bit higher than California's sales taxes, but of course the BC resident has government medical coverage.

Two important caveats however:

1. Depending on your income, BC is the lowest-tax or very close to the lowest-tax jurisdiction in Canada. Someone earning $50k in Quebec would pay around $13k of income taxes instead of $10k.

2. Salaries in Canada are vastly lower than San Francisco / Silicon Valley salaries.

> That particular simpletax calculator is weirdly broken -- it seems to ignore payroll taxes. ... Once you include CPP (Canada's version of Social Security) and Employment Insurance

That is disappointing. I̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶a̶m̶e̶n̶d̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶m̶e̶n̶t̶.̶ (Can't amend, the above post is too old.)

> someone earning $50k in BC pays just over $10k... plus another $900/month (more if you're not single) of mandatory tax-but-not-called-a-tax government medical premiums.

$900 a month? Are you certain of that? That seems very high, unless it is paid by the employer. Is that a fixed amount or is it dependent on income?

> 1. Depending on your income, BC is the lowest-tax or very close to the lowest-tax jurisdiction in Canada. Someone earning $50k in Quebec would pay around $13k of income taxes instead of $10k.

I chose BC because it seemed to be having it's own tech boom in Vancouver and has very mild weather in that area. I felt that would be relevant to alot of people here.

$900 a month? Are you certain of that?

As cbowal noted, the $900 is per year, not per month. I'd fix it above, but apparently my comment is also too old to be corrected now...

I chose BC because it seemed to be having it's own tech boom in Vancouver and has very mild weather in that area. I felt that would be relevant to alot of people here.

Oh, I entirely agree -- the Vancouver area is the only part of Canada I would want to live in. (Well, maybe Victoria, but that has the same weather and tax rates.) My point was simply that Canada's reputation for being a high-tax jurisdiction isn't entirely undeserved when you consider that most of Canada has significantly higher taxes than BC.

>>2. Salaries in Canada are vastly lower than San Francisco / Silicon Valley salaries.

This, so much this. As a Canadian (living in Edmonton, AB moving to CA in a few days) the difference in pay is simply staggering. Since a lot of our prices are CAD/USD exchange adjusted (essentially buying, for example, a GTX 1080 is the same in USD, but costs "300" dollars more in here) the difference is compounded even further. Its not unheard of making 2-3x in the Valley compared to what you make up North. So then the tax situation becomes moot, because we're talking about the amount of cash that you take home which after all the taxes, and even the living expenses, is still significantly higher.

Correction: British Columbia's MSP Premiums for a single adult are $75/month or ($900/YEAR).

Whoops! I started to write $75/month and then thought "no, an annual number is more useful", but clearly forgot to change the units... thanks for catching this!

Coupled with that is the propaganda pushed by various political parties and interested factions that we are among the highest taxed in the world, if not the highest taxed.

Many people believe that despite it being a statement which is entirely a fiction.

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