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Comment by saqadri | Hacker News Reader

Must be nice :). I wish I was in that 40%

I am, and honestly… my city keeps raising the taxes so damn much that I wouldn’t say I am just swimming in cash.

Tax in America boggles me. In my mind it is all low tax, and we brits pay more.

Council tax, which is the sort of local tax most similar to the one you mention is about £2k a year on a large 4 bed house - and council tax is pretty flat - the least you can pay is about £1k - the most expensive houses you still only pay about £3k or less.

I'm confused. I read "we brits pay more", yet what I read is that the maximum tax to pay on a large house is £3K. I'd love to have property/council tax that low (it would cut our tax bill in half). And we live in a 1200 feet^2/112 m^2 shoebox. Granted, Redmond, WA ain't cheap, but even someplace out in the sticks is going to be at least that much if one decides on the 4000 sq. ft. McMansion.

So which part of my reading comprehension failed? :-)

Council Tax really should be more (speaking as someone who would be affected). Council funding has been massively cut back by central government resulting in a lot of problems at the local level.

Sorry - poorly written - I was continuing on 'in my mind, we brits pay more'

Ah, got it; makes much more sense now. Thanks for the clarification.

Tax on a 4 bedroom house in Silicon Valley bought recently probably runs about $20,000 per year on average. Granted this is one of the highest in the US but I don't know anyone with property tax that low.

But the problem is that you live in England while I live in America. I used to live in England and happily pay more real estates taxes for the privilege of living in the USA.

Good for you. My point was that the 'story of America' is low tax and freedom. Low tax no longer seems to be true (or is it?) and freedom is debatable.

America isn't the same as Britain as there's no uniform tax code except at the federal level. Think of the US like the EU where it has individual states that have their own tax burden which can be low or substantial. It all depends where you live. In terms of freedom, what is your definition of freedom? That needs to be understood first.

Yes. My property taxes have gone from about $450/mo to about $1,250/mo in 18 years.

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