Comment by colde | Hacker News Reader

Comment by colde | Hacker News Reader

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I am going to need some sort of citation for the idea that Europe has high corporate taxes. According to KPMG the EU average is lower than the current US corporate tax rate. Furthermore, setting it at 37% is 3% lower than the US tax rate was last year. I don't really see any downside to doing this. It's not like companies are not going to do business in Europe, it's waaay to attractive a market.

Also, "spending money on immigrants" sounds like it's just being given to immigrants, the money is specifically to countries cope with the cost that is there already. It might fuel right wing nationalists, but that seems to happen anyway, while they are busy doing their thing, it would be nice if the sensible people tried to tackle the issues at hand.

" EU average is lower than the current US corporate tax rate."

Eeastern European countries generally have very low tax rates which brings the average down.

Otherwise they are 'ballpark similar' [1]

But that's only one source of taxation. As for the rest, they are very, very high in Europe.

I think the issues are probably in efficiencies across the board, more than redistribution at this point.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates

Germany 29% and 47.5%

France 15% and 45%

Italy 27.9% and 43%

UK 19% and 47%

Spain 25% and 45%

Sure, California and some other special states can get almost as high. But the majority are well below.

Add ~20% VAT to this. Add the fuel tax. Then add corruption and incopetence when spending government money.

All those taxes does not let lower middle class to move up. I see this all around me. There are exceptions of course, but the end result is that by simply working your whole life you are going to be forever in the lower middle class. Because of taxes.

And yet we have the Nordics with the highest tax pressure in the world (has been for a while) which do better than most. Like Hans Rowling said, if you want the American dream (with max class mobility), you should go to Denmark.

But hey! Why not throw around some more claims without some proper sources/references.

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