Anyone living in California or NYC and making mid six figures and up is easily paying more than German tax rates then. You’re paying almost 50% around high six figure range.
I’ve never quite understood why people think the US is a low tax country.
I’ve never quite understood why people think the US is a low tax country.
That's a gross oversimplification and thus very misleading. While your marginal tax rate on taxable income (not gross income) might be close to 50%, if you are married filing joint, a homeowner, and have children, you are not paying anywhere near 50% effective tax rate[0] on your total income, due to deductions and exemptions, credits, tax-deferred retirement contributions, tax-free health insurance, and progressive tax brackets.
[0] "effective tax rate" does not have a universally agreed single definition, but the statement holds for most reasonable definitions.
Obviously you're right that marginal != effective, but Americans really do pay a LOT in taxes, when you add it up, for a relatively middling level of services (e.g. no public healthcare, no subsidized daycares, marginal-quality public schools)
https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/tax-burden-by-state...
From a quick Google: The US federal income tax rate for low earners is something like 12%. In the UK it's 20%. In Sweden it looks like the municipal tax is 32%. The few other countries I looked up had complicated tax systems that made it hard to compare, not that the above examples (and the US) aren't missing their deductions.
Your reply is "what about the 1%ers who live in two of the most expensive cities in the world? What about THEM?"
What about the 99.9% of Americans who don't make six figures in one of those two cities?
I've never quite understood why people think America is a few million people living in 2 cities. You know there's 320,000,000 more us of right?
At this point making “mid six figures” hardly makes you rich. You don’t have to be the top 1% to see a tax rate higher than the one you stated.
Point is arguing that Americans are low taxed when the highest paying jobs are concentrated in high tax states and cost of living is much higher ignores reality for many Americans who pay as much or more than Europeans.
The median household income in California is $80k and of the 40 million in California, very few work in tech.
California actually has extremely progressive tax laws and extremely low property taxes, so while you're right that the actually wealthy folks do pay a European-level of taxation, the working class actually pays a dramatically tax rate than their counterparts in Europe.
Anyone with any knowledge of California knows all of this, so when you made such odd points that seemed to challenge it, I tried to help you by assuming you meant SF.
Point is: the vast majority of Americans pay vastly less taxes than Europeans and no weird focuses on outliers is going to change reality.
Funny side note: I still am the only person who posted OECD apples to apples data, which you have rejected un-critically with no sourcing and nothing but hand waves about your feelings. Hmmm.