Comment by volta83 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by volta83 | Hacker News Reader

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I pay 30% of my income in taxes.

I get, in no order:

- free transportation (free high quality high-ways, train network, subway, tram, bus, rent-a-bike...),

- free education for myself and my children, from pre-kinder garten up to university.

- paid very high-level education (PhD, postdoc) for myself and my children,

- free health-care for everyone,

- universal salary for everyone (no homeless people around, extremely low crime rates)

- free sport offerings, open-air health activities, safety sport training (climbing, skiing, ...)

- free internet,

- free cable TV,

- all the usual stuff (garbage collection, street cleaning, access to water and power networks, etc.)

Of course, "free" does not mean "free", since I'm paying all of this with my taxes.

But how many taxes do you pay, and what do you get from them?

Because what I get is that my biggest worry in life is "How will the weather look like at the weekend?" and "Depending on that I might go hiking, or cycling, or surfing, or skiing...".

I don't worry about my children, or school, or being able to pay for anything, or crime, or security, I don't worry about my 6 year old son taking the subway and a bus alone to go to primary school, or them making it back home safely, or my 16 year old daughter going partying till 5am and then walking home alone at night, or what happens if they break an arm and need to go to the hospital, or whether I can afford the university they want to go to, etc.

Like, really, my only worry in life is "What's the weather like and what am I going to be able to do in the weekend depending on the weather".

Which country is this? 30% seems reasonable for all that.

Most likely a Scandinavian country.

I figured as much, but was surprised by the 30% figure. I always assumed a tax rate of > 40% to support those social programs and benefits.

Paying 50% of your salary can be "ok" for a rich person, tough on middle class families with children, and impossible for a poor person (difference between making and not making rent).

This is why tax rates aren't constant for all incomes, they depend on income, costs (family, children, etc.), etc.

My tax rate would be slightly over 40% if I were single, but my partner's income isn't as high (still over >35% taxes), and we have two children. We get taxed as a family, so our incomes kind of get added and divided by four, and then our "family" tax rate is ~30%.

If you earn a lot of money and have no family / children to care for, then you get taxed with the highest rate which is slightly less than 50%.

If that's not your situation, your tax rate will be lower.

Also, there are some ways to delay paying at least a portion of your taxes (e.g. by getting stock compensation, and paying the taxes on the original price of the stock much later when you sell, etc.), which are often used for high paying jobs (somebody working on a dinner doesn't get "stock").

Having said all this, I've payed almost 50% taxes before, and it was ok. My net salary was still way above the median, and the cost of living here is relatively cheap.

The only real difference of this tax systems are (1) all the benefits that you get, and (2) the variable tax-rate widens the middle class significantly: it is harder to become "poorer" if your salary decrease because the tax rate decreases with it, and it is harder to double your net salary because the tax rate grows with salary increases, at least up to the almost 50% limit.

Many of the benefits are just the outcome of having a large number of people that live with 1 job, working 35h/week, and that don't have to look at their bank account ever to see if they'll make it to the end of the month.

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