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Comment by klunger | Hacker News Reader

I am an American who has lived in Norway for several years. I have to deal with this crap every year and, when the time comes to choose between passports, I am honestly not sure which choice I will make. I love US, as I spent my formative years there and those were some pretty good years, but am less a fan of US tax law.

Yep. I find the Norwegian taxation system to be considerably more manageable and equitable. You pay taxes that are not much higher than in the US and actually get things in return, like excellent health care, free tuition a social safety net, better infrastructure, and a much much higher standard of living across the board. Wellstone was right: We all do better when we all do better. It's genuinely great, but I digress...

The other awesome thing about Norwegian taxes is that the government does it for you. At the end of the year, they send you form with all of your taxes done and ask, "Is this right?" If it is, you click a button and are done. If not, then you might have to do a little work, but it is still so so so much less than managing the US taxes.

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> You pay taxes that are not much higher than in the US and actually get things in return

This is what bothers me the most about the U.S. Federal Government. Most of the things I enjoy in the U.S. are provided by my city, county and state. Things like courts and fire protection and cops and roads and schools and water and sewage systems and electricity and parks.

And what's amazing about all that is I don't pay very much for it. States and cities seem to be able to really stretch our tax dollars.

I pay a lot more into the federal government and in return I get interstates (which are awesome) and the TSA at airports and borders. Other than that, I don't really have many tangible interactions with the federal government at all. This was made very obvious during the shutdown, which I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been reading the news. It seems to be largely a money pit.

Bear with me as I don't live in the US but doesn't some money taxed by the federal entity trickle down to the states somehow ?

edit: What's the state/federal taxes ratio ?

Yes, but only if you live in a poorer state. Every state I've lived in has been one of the rich states that gives more money to the federal government than it receives in services.

But that does not mean that federal taxes do not enhance the state budget. That just means your federal taxes amount to more than the assistance your state gets. So your state budget is still enhanced by federal grants, over what it would have been.

To answer your first question: yes. However, the amount varies greatly by state and changes year to year. Many of the programs for which states receive federal money are temporary in nature. Others, like federal subsidies for state Medicaid programs, are more permanent in nature. The actual ratio is going to be very uneven throughout the country.

The ratio is different for every state and every tax bracket, but in California, on a married developers salary with a house, we pay something like 17.5% Fed, 9.3% state, and local (property tax) is 1.4376% of the value of your home, which on my salary is something like 5%.

So for us, income and property tax add up to almost 32% of our income.

Home ownership is the big wildcard in that calculation. You could pay nothing to your locality (other than sales taxes) if you don't own a home and instead pay a higher percentage to the feds.*

* - of course, someone owns the home and is paying property taxes, but your personal tax bill doesn't reflect that.

See a sibling comment. It does work like that. There an interesting power division between fed, state and local.

Fed usually use the "carrot" approach to distributing some taxes. So instead of "forcing" states to comply say to set a speed limit. They'll just withhold the funds for road repair and maintenance if speed limit is not set according to some standards. Perhaps the same goes for other things welfare money, drinking age, etc.

Some people are fiercely in favour of more state control (almost down to a religious type conviction). I never really got that. I came from Europe and when I think of "government" I think of one government entity. It operates at multiple levels but it is more or the same entity. And basic things like traffic laws, gun laws, sales taxes, etc are uniform.

Because in theory you have more control over your state and (even more) your local authorities. This is a consequence of simple voting power theory - and extending the notion of 'control' beyond single votes to activism, letter-writing, pamphleteering, etc. (In practice it doesn't work that way because no one seems to care that much about the local authorities, probably because it's more exciting to keep people excited about people in power at higher levels).

Europe will come to understand that philosophy as it merges to become the EU. Already the EU is an overcomplicated mess where the dynamics of agency are unclear. It will get worse as the EU claims more power over the member states.

> Europe will come to understand that philosophy as it merges to become the EU

I'm not sure that is very likely. France for example is 65 million people, so around 1/5th of the US. That is not a very large difference, and that's twice the size of the largest US state.

With anywhere between 1 and 11 million inhabitants, French régions are actually close to US states, yet since 1789, there have been little will to delegate more power to the régions (or the smaller départements).

Some people like having a central government that ensures equality between all parts of the territory. On the other hand we might have more little overseas régions that might have a hard time fending for themselves if the central state didn't allocate more money to them without asking the other régions' opinion.

I'm not sure about your comparison. 315M is a lot closer to 500M than it is to 65M. And as far as land mass and GDP go, the US is bigger than the whole of Europe. The EU is newer and so it's hard to say if it will ever get the teeth the US federal government has, but it should be noted that State's Rights are enshrined in the US Constitution, so philosophically it's closer to the EU than to French régions. There no is question of delegating power to states, it's a question of states ceding power to the federal government.

Well, have you thought about Kant's theory that larger Republics are actually more stable? In practice that has seemed to work out.

I agree, as a foreigner living in the US, it's baffling how different each state is in regards to law/budgets/etc.

What do you think of the EU? Is it a reasonable level of state control? Would you expand it's reach?

US States are European Countries. The demographics are similar. State/Municipal governments are far more integrated than state/Federal, much like the EU/Country divide.

But it isn't that simple. State budgets are partly funded by federal taxes. Just skimming this abstract from the CBO report[0], in 2011, 25% of state and local government expenses were covered by federal grants amounting to over half a trillion dollars.

[0] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/43967

Sure, I'm simplifying, but I think my point stands.

Federal tax as percent of GDP: 19% [1]

State and local tax as percent of GDP: 9% [2]

So, even if we bump up state and local expenditures to 11.25%, it still seems like we're getting a better deal from local governance.

1) http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Doc...

2) http://www.ncsl.org/documents/fiscal/TaxesandtheEconomy.pdf (a little out of date...)

As explained in other comments, Federal Govt is basically a giant insurance company with an army.

This is an over simplification as some States pay more in taxes then they get in return via various federal pay outs.

Some states get less in payouts than their _residents_ pay in taxes. But the state budgets are still larger with the federal payouts than they would be with only the state taxes.

Some would argue (not myself, just pointing it out), that every one of your interactions is made in freedom, which is made possible by a very large military spend.

Except that many other countries have freedom but don't spend anywhere near as much (absolute or per capita) on defence.

Foreign countries might or might not have freedom if the US were not subsidizing their security with expensive US military operations around the world.

Some say the US screwed up so much under Bush it would have been better to loose the world without American protection, and Bush did do a terrible job. But we don't know either way.

In any case, many other countries would pay more for military operations if the US paid less.

The flip side of that is that the USA has heavily subsidized the defenses of Europe and the rest of the world.

Not that they've asked for it - but it's difficult to conceive that Europe would have escaped Hitler or the USSR's aggressions without a lot of military spending on their behalf by the USA.

Conversely, it's difficult to conceive that the United States would have gained independence over the UK without a lot of military spending on their behalf and direct military actions by the French.

Well, by the Bourbon monarchy in France.

What does that have to do with current US defense spending?

Or was it just some kind of one-upmanship?

What does WW2 have to do with current defence spending?

A lot, actually. Most of the European countries were so badly in debt at the end of it that it laid the foundations for the US's expanded sphere of influence, particularly as regards the Middle East and East Asia. It was also the first time that the United States had united completely with one global objective and accomplished it. It created a Global Bipolar system which ended up with unipolarity after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Plus, it created the military industrial complex.

So...a lot.

US subsidizes the defense budgets of Norway and Saudi Arabia alike.

Sure, some of these countries have great freedom, but I'm not convinced whether US military subsidy protects freedom or just the status quo.

I don't see how the US military expenditure helps American freedom. Not only is it used to restrict freedoms of some other countries (admittedly sometimes it's restricting the freedom of governments that seek to restrict the freedom of their people, which could arguably be a good thing, but this isn't always the case), but hand-me-downs to the police are used to restrict the freedom of Americans themselves.

you get war and war and more war!

The top programs the Federal Government pays for are Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and the military. Everything else is in the small single digit percentages.

If you're not fighting a war or retired, it's not a surprise that you don't see much direct benefit from federal spending.

State operations like schools, streets and roads, airports, transit, and police are much more visible in daily life. Still, state budgets are supplemented with grants from the federal government, too.

But the big point here is that retirement and health care and war are the biggest federal operations. And, to reference op, you don't get much benefit of that living overseas.

--- Incidentally, the TSA is paid for by air ticket taxes and the interstates were paid for mostly by federal gas taxes and maintained by state taxes. Only new highway construction is paid for out of federal income taxes since the gas tax became unpopular in Congress in the 1990s and was allowed to drop too low to pay for highway grants so it was replaced with income tax money. So even your visible federal tax benefit examples aren't really paid out of federal income tax.

Social Security and Medicare are not entitlement programs. They are insurance programs that are largely acutuarily sound. They should not be considered government expenditures as they are funded by the users of the insurance programs.

They are entitlement programs. Current taxpayers pay for current beneficiaries, and it has been that way since the programs were founded. Who do you think paid for the first recipients of social security?

> Who do you think paid for the first recipients of social security?

I didn't know this was the case. Why would they start paying out as soon as they started collecting? It makes no sense to me.

When you strip away the financial facade, what remains is current workers providing surplus output for retirees to consume.

That's true, but it's also true of any savings scheme, and any scheme where retirees exist, public or private.

Yes, the differences between them being how much they provision. Social Security allots more of the surplus to retirees than the previous status quo.

They actually didn't intend to; it was supposed to have around a decade of money paid in before any started going out. Also, though, remember that it didn't cover the same people it covers now.

Can we go back to a scheme where we have a decade of money paid in? I'd happily pay a little more if it helps end the endless name calling and what not.

It's heading that way right now, although the baby boomers will presumably reverse that fairly soon. Here's a table from 1937 to 2013:

http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4a1.html

I found it interesting that the system looks to be in far better shape today than it has been for many decades. In the early ears, assets outweighed expenditures by a huge amount, sometimes by more than a factor of 10. As you move down the table, this stops, and in the 1970s it hits a 1:1 ratio of yearly expenditures to assets, then shoots way past. In 1983, the trust fund had under $20 billion in assets but the program spent $153 billion! That's clearly a program where current taxpayers are paying for current retirees, rather than the savings program it's painted as.

By the late 80s, things start looking much better, as income substantially outweighs expenditures. In 2001, the trust fund exceeded $1 trillion while expenditures were at a considerably more modest $378 billion. The 2013 figure has about $2.7 trillion in the trust fund, with expenditures of about $679 billion. Not a factor of 10, but certainly far better than the 60s, 70s, or 80s.

I knew that SS was in better shape than many people say, but I had no idea that it used to be so much worse. The picture painted by the naysayers is one of a long slide towards disaster, whereas it looks like the program is currently doing great. Future demographic shifts will certainly hurt a lot, but compared to the years when the trust fund was essentially nonexistent there's almost nothing to worry about.

I don't think that is correct for social security.

I just started taking social security (yes, I am an old programmer :-) and unless I live a very long time I will never get back all that I have paid into social security, if you take I to account what I put in and earn a small amount of interest on the money (which is not so small with compounding).

Medicare is more of a government handout - I agree with you there.

I imagine the first recipients of Social Security paid for themselves.

This page has the story of the first SS beneficiary:

http://www.ssa.gov/history/imf.html

This wasn't until 1940, even though the program began three years before.

As far as I know, SS benefits are and always have been determined by what you pay in, from the beginning. Do you have information to the contrary?

The distinction is meaningless. It is always the case that the currently economically active part of the population pays for those who aren't active. [1]

If you prefer thinking in monetary terms (as most people do), think about somebody who has a retirement savings account. Their money comes out of payments that firms make (in the form of interest on bonds, or in the form of dividends etc.). This is money that could otherwise have gone to the employees of those firms.

To get an even clearer picture, think about it in real terms. Retirees use up real resources and services that are generated by the currently working population. So the current workers provide for the current beneficiaries, plain and simple. The movements of money that are used to reflect the movements of real resources is really just a thin layer on top, and it would be wise not to focus too much on the cosmetics of that thin layer.

[1] Mostly children and retirees and, if you allow yourself to be honest about the reality of capitalism, the rich and powerful.

In effect they hit the budget, as they only "invest" in US government securities. Now that SOcial Security doesn't have a surplus, it is drawing off of debt service payments paid by the treasury.

It's an entitlement program masquerading as an investment program, largely by design, as the high payroll taxes that accompany the program are meant to provide it political legitimacy.

To pick a nit, people in the armed services don't get benefits, they get compensation. The beneficiaries of the armed forces are the ones not fighting.

You also leave off debt service, which is approaching the military budget in size.

That aside, I agree with what you wrote.

>You also leave off debt service, which is approaching the military budget in size.

There's a lot of FUD and wrong opinions approaching the national debt, and people don't think about it correctly.

Very briefly, I'll make one point to bring some of this to light: 40% of the national debt is owned by the government.

* 16% by social security (so this portion isn't debt service, it's SS funding) * 13% by other government entities (likewise funding these agencies) * 12% by the Federal Reserve (whose profits are remitted to the Treasury, this money is free)

Another 25% of the debt is owned by Americans in some form or another.

For comparison, the two largest foreign debt holders are China and Japan each with about 7%.

I fail to see why that's better.

If default is the worst case scenario, defaulting on foreign banks seems preferable to defaulting on your retirees. The same is true for money printing, as retirees are harmed greatly by inflation.

If you owe debts to other countries you have to pay that money outside the system. So it takes a certain percentage of production (GDP) and pays the benefit of that production to people in other countries. Japan has a much bigger debt problem than the USA in percentage terms. Nearly all their debt is owed to those in Japan so when it is paid it merely redistributes wealth (rather than losing it to those overseas).

While inflation can allow you to payoff debt with less valuable $ and thus reduce the value of what is given to other countries (also to retirees and other holders of government debt but for the matter of losing wealth to other countries that isn't a factor). But markets adjust and unless you have now paid off all your debt and owe nothing you have to borrow again, and lenders will demand larger interest payments to make up for the risk of your debasing the currency to pay them back worthless dollars. So while this can maybe work in the short term if you fool the markets it most likely doesn't work in the long term for the USA.

I would say it is probably true defaulting on foreign banks would be preferable but it isn't that neat. The USA would default to everybody and it would be chaos (because of the central role of the USA - different than if some minor economic power defaults). The USA owes lots to foreigners and those in the USA and while spreading the costs of default overseas sounds better really it would be so catastrophic I doubt it matters. Debasing the currency through inflation is what would happen instead in the case of the USA. Which would have bad costs to the USA and to those holding USA government debt.

>Everything else is in the small single digit percentages.

What is aggravating is that this is where they want to make the most cuts. Not to defense or large social programs. 2 or 3 billion to NASA will make huge progress for our country and technology, and it is a drop in the pond for the government. Yet, that is where they want to make cuts.

The federal government spends mostly on SS, Medicare/Medicaid, and military.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_F...

Presumably if the fed wasn't paying for social security and medicare/medicaid, your state would have to, or you'd have bands of sick and elderly wandering the streets like so many zombies. If the fed wasn't paying for the military, I guess your state could also do this, lest the Brits march in and put us all under the rule of the king again.

Norway population is 5 million so it makes sense not to have federal/state divided governance like in US.

Don't forget: Eternal war is expensive.

You also get an awesome army that kicks asses around the world, isn't that cool? ;)

Don't forget a massive amount of military spending, which trickles down to the local communities in the form of reckless and unnecessary police militarization.

Also: FDA, EPA, FCC, FBI, CIA, and tons of other TLD agencies that keep the country running in the long run.

>>The other awesome thing about Norwegian taxes is that the government does it for you.

The US has also attempted to do this. However, every attempt has been killed by corporate interests (like Intuit) and politicians (mostly Republicans) and special-interest-groups (conservative anti-tax organizations)

The latter claim that the government shouldn't automatically create a form with all taxes done because the government will not try to minimize citizen tax payments (and most people will check the 'OK' button without reviewing their taxes to see if they can get additional deductions). In reality, I think that most anti-tax organizations realize that they'll lose a significant portion of their support if filing taxes becomes easy. In the case of companies like Intuit, the motives are obviously transparent.

This may be true, but I downvoted your comment because I don't see any sources for the strongly worded assertions made.

If we downvoted every assertion on HN that didn't come with a complete annotated appendix of sources, that would be every comment. Why do you apply this standard to this comment, and not to others?

A googling of something like "intuit lobby irs" will turn up as much info as you care to have about the situation, incidentally.

This isn't such a far fetched claim. In Israel for example - you get taxes deducted from your pay check every month, directly by your employer, based on the assumption that will be your constant salary for the rest of the year. Now lets say you get fired in September, lowering your annual salary and bringing you into a lower tax bracket - unless you personally file for a return at the end of the year, the government feels no obligation to return the taxes you've overpaid.

OK, but in the UK it’s the same scenario until the point where the government automatically returns any extra taxes you’ve paid (assuming you’re purely paying income tax through your employer).

It's a possibility but it will not be forcibly true. In Belgium you also get taxes deducted from your pay check every month and if you pay to much they just put back the money into your account every year

I don't see how this is much different from the current situation in the United States.

Most people (I bet HN readership included) are paid under a full time employee structure where the employer files a W2 and deducts all (or most) of the federal taxes the employee is liable for from their paychec. Even if you are a contractor, you're supposed to pay all of your own taxes every quarter (or pay penalties + interest), including your employer's half of the Medicare/Social Security taxes.

The big difference in the United States is that you are still required to file your own forms by April for the previous fiscal year for your tax return. You still have to do work to get a nontrivial amount of money back.

I file my taxes on paper and I do the calculations by hand. I want it to be as painful as possible so I never forget how insanely complex and budensome it is.

I'd like to click one button, and for you to still have the option to be a masochist.

Does anyone hold those politicians up on this issue and demand further justification, spread the word of what they're obstructing?

Of course not! By the time of the elections, everybody has forgotten who voted for what, and it's all about the same old tribalism again.

I'm hoping people will start to realize this more over time. The taxes we pay in the United States are not that low, not when you start talking about the lack of social services we have and compare that to other countries with far more comprehensive programs. I have some Canadian friends who were shocked to learn I pay more taxes than they do. Well, of course, they were also shocked to learn I had health insurance at all, but that's a different story.

High taxes. Long wars that promise to only get longer. Lack of meaningful industry regulations. For what? What is it getting us? It's not like we're getting free tuition out of it, or even reasonably cheap tuition. It's not like we're getting more land and resources--and freedums, I seem to have a lot fewer of those these days, and it weren't no Al Qaida that done took 'em from me. We aren't getting cheaper products with more innovative features. Republicrats and Demicans can argue all day about what change is needed, and we've only ended up with the worst of both sides of the aisle. We'd be a lot better off with the whole program of one system, even if it was the system I didn't agree with.

>Republicrats and Demicans

My boss goes with the phrase "Republi-cons and Demo-rats" which I was always a fan of.

> We aren't getting cheaper products with more innovative features

I have a paperback sized device that can download thousands upon thousands of books pretty much anywhere I am. I think it's nothing short of incredible! And the battery lasts for several weeks at a go, to boot.

Your comments about taxes are fairly accurate, but the above surprised me some.

I think that happened despite the entrenched business interests who both used government subsidy to get going, then have fought regulation tooth and nail to be able to gouge the customer. Remember, Apple had tried to do a phone before the iPhone. And they listened to the wireless providers about what it should be, and it was awful.

It doesn't hurt that Oil accounts for 30% of Norwegian government revenue[1]. Of course you experience higher services at a similar tax burden.

1: http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21570842-oil-ma...)

I'm sure it helps, but we have mostly the same situation in the rest of Scandinavia and that's without any oil.

Let's be honest here: the real issue is bureaucracy, not the actual tax bill. Whether taxes are higher or lower; whether they're on income, consumption or corporations - unless there's some really dramatic difference, it's all a bit of a wash.

Cost of living to some degree reflects what people actually can afford because that's what suppliers can get away with.

The stress and time wasted to comply with pointless regulations (ala IRS) likely affects your quality of life more than a few numbers on a balance sheet that are likely compensated by living costs.

95% of that is put into the Government Pension Fund Global (colloquially the Oil Fund) which, contrary to its name, is not used for pensions. It just sits there, and together with the actual Norwegian pension fund it's the largest sovereign fund in the world. The Oil Fund holds 857.1 billion USD. The reason for the arrangement is to control inflation and avoid the dutch disease.

Norway is not Saudi Arabia, in other words. The part that worries me is not oil's contribution to the government balance, but its outsized share of private enterprise, especially technology.

4% of the entire fund gets paid out each year. Nobody claims that the Harvard endowment isn't a boon to Harvard just because they stick most of their large donations there instead of spending them immediately.

But that's financial* income. I interpreted the parent as implying that the reason taxes are so low is because of oil, which is not necessarily true, and at least harder to prove than you would think.

*The fund is composed of 60% global shares, 35% bonds and 5% real estate.

Live(!) valuation here: http://www.nbim.no/en/

If I strike oil and make a million dollars, then put that money into bonds, I wouldn't say the income I get from the bonds is "bond money" rather than "oil money".

That said, I certainly agree that wise application of that oil income has as much of an impact on the country's financial well-being as the income itself.

Sound nice except for the being frozen part :-)

The IRS could do our taxes as well if there weren't 500,000 special interest exceptions to everything.

they could probably do it anyway, but intuit lobbied against it:

http://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-maker-linked-to-g...

The lobbying by Intuit that prevents us from having first-world taxing bodies makes my blood boil.

We need a "lobby for the common people" fund.

The irony of this statement is that the entire US government itself was formed on a similar premise.

"government of the people, by the people, for the people"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Address

Those are called “taxes”. In theory.

To be fair, there's lobbying on the other side against simplified tax codes. There have been lots of proposals: flat tax, fair tax, consumption taxes, VATs, etc. All are opposed by lobbying groups and not even the same ones.

All this foaming at the mouth and finger pointing only makes things worse.

I think we can all agree that you should never have to pay to have your taxes done. Taxes are a rule set, a rule set that can be codified into software.

The IRS should be able to prefill all of your taxes for you, and allow you to click Submit. But you should be able to change/add info, if you have supporting documentation. There is no reason Intuit and other businesses should need to exist to provide tax preparation services.

Well yeah but we're talking about the U.S. here, this is a culture that won't put final prices on price tags because then the customers won't know how much sales tax they're paying.

And the special interest lobbying of tax preparers to not let the IRS fill out our taxes.

The IRS could prepare a fairly reasonable tax return, and let people modify it for their deductions or unreported income. But for most people, all their income is reported, along with mortgage info.

with a seventy five thousand page tax code do we think they could?

Taxes should be a one page affair, yet as always politicians are adept at dividing us, boxing us, and generally punishing us when we don't do as we are told. The IRS is a political weapon more often than not.

As a typical corporate drone with a house how complex should my taxes be? I do the correct deductions throughout the year yet I never have a near zero difference.

> with a seventy five thousand page tax code do we think they could?

Yes, for nearly everyone.

In fact, the IRS already does this -- your employer, bank, etc have already reported all of the biggest items to the IRS. They know what your tax bill will look like before you even crack open the 1040 instructions. Then when you file they'll compare what you send via the baseline and flag anything that has a discrepancy in that taxpayer's favor.

The IRS could easily let you start with the baseline and just say "OK, sounds good" or "actually, I've itemized my deductions, here is what I think the number should be". In fact the IRS wants to do that since it would be less work for them overall. Congress won't never let them though.

To bring it back to the original article, this is also why expats should never expect tax relief. The tax preparation industry would lose millions of customers.

Someday we will be paying people to throw their feces around in the name of creating jobs and protecting the janitorial industry.

If only the American public actually understood the value of paying someone to have responsibilities rather than paying them to do work. But that might entail paying people to do their taxes, get an educations, vote, obey the law, etc. Real communism stuff!

>You pay taxes that are not much higher than in the US and actually get things in return, like excellent health care, free tuition a social safety net, better infrastructure, and a much much higher standard of living across the board. Wellstone was right: We all do better when we all do better.

You mean "We all do better when we use oil money spend $3800 more per capita than we collect in taxes".

> You pay taxes that are not much higher than in the US and actually get things in return

This is amazing. (Let's disregard the two countries' differences in population sizes, demographics, debt, and military budgets.) A self-employed person in the US tends to lose between 40 and 50% of income to triple-taxes (depending on federal, state, and local levels), self-employment tax, and the need to buy expensive health insurance. What is the range of Norwegian tax rates under similar circumstances? Does Norway have a high consumption or sales tax rate?

Norway has a 25% VAT rate (lower for food and other items).

But you do pay $25 USD for a cheeseburger.

Don't know about Norway, but here in New Zealand there is a personal income tax with progressive rates from 17.5% to 33%, with an additional ~1.5% ACC levy (essentially accident insurance). There's also 15% flat-rate GST (a value-added tax) applied to everything at point of sale.

Councils also charge rates for local road, service and facility management based on land and improvement value, this works out to around $1000-$2000 per year for a family-size house. This is simply invoiced to the home owner.

There are limited rebates for low-income people, especially families.

This covers healthcare - both emergency and elective (though there are waiting lists for elective procedures), education at pre-univeristy levels (though schools do ask for donations because the funding is low after decades of cuts), road maintenance, public transport subsidies, unemployment and sickness benefits, armed forces and various other things.

All this is deducted as I earn, I haven't filed a tex return since I was self employed 8 years ago. As a self-employed contractor I could claim business expenses against income and then paid the personal income tax on the remainder. I did not have an accountant for this, though I have accounting training.

Incorporated companies pay a flat 28% tax, though there are some company types where the shareholders simply pay personal tax on dividends. There's no requirement for a company to be registered or incorporated though, simply pay personal tax on any profits.

Also we don't have any capital gains tax, stamp duty, or pretty much any other sort of tax, other than import duties.

Everywhere overseas looks so complex from this perspective.

Self-employment tax? I get a self-employment tax cut. (Though recently the tax service has been complaining it's losing too much revenue due to the rising popularity of self-empoyment, so that cut might be on the way out.) I believe my actual income taxes over 2013 amounted to about 10%, which is distressingly low. I don't mind paying a bit more than that.

This is in Netherland, by the way. We also have sales tax that ranges from 6% for necessities (food, books) to 21% for luxuries. My health insurance costs about EUR 100 per month.

Oh that last thing is nice; I feel like the Canadian government could easily do the same, as what they are essentially doing is checking my work against theirs, and sending me a notice afterwards that says "yup!" or "you were off by a bit".

Although it still only takes me 30 minutes.

Oooh... Irish taxes are like that too! I miss it.

German taxes, on the other hand...

How bad are the German tax forms? I'm considering moving there. Is it just that you have to do it by hand, or are they more complicated as well?

How could Germany have an inefficient tax filing program? That doesn't make any sense. Please explain somebody

Oh boy, you have clearly never encountered the German bureaucracy. I know it was meant as a joke, but it won't be so funny once you get in the habit of carrying a document folder with you with all the documentation you have for every bureaucracy encounter. The one redeeming quality is that everything is always properly done.

Germany as a collective may seem efficient. Germany on an individual basis is... well, a whole lot of work I never considered before moving here. Good luck to you.

Also, there kinda isn't one Germany. Mittelstand vs Megacorp and different cities are all very different.

If you are employed you don't have to touch tax forms.

I'm a PhD student, so of course your mileage may vary, but at the end of the year I have two options: I can accept that whatever the government deducted from my salary was correct (and do nothing else), or I can fill a form if I think I should be getting money in return.

I know that the special cases (foreign income, family outside the country and so on) are a bit more complex, though.

The story is that you can usually get money back by filing your taxes. To file your taxes, you buy this year's software, and block off a straight weekend to enter the data. Or you pay an accountant, who will as likely as not royally bodge it, potentially illegally.

I have been ignoring the problem.

I had to ask about 5 people "wait, so I REALLY don't have to file taxes?? Seriously?" after I moved to Ireland before it really sank in. The answer is no, and if you need to change your tax situation (for instance, if you get married) a simple email to your local PAYE office will often suffice. I email DubNorthCityPAYE@revenue.ie and usually get a response within a few days.

Of course, the sad thing is that I actually DO still have to file taxes. To the US.

The awesomest part about Norwegian taxes is that they don't have to pay for everything because of all the Norwegian North Sea oil. I'm happy for the Norwegians, but this is not apples to apples.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norw...

Yes, because the US doesn't have any oil ... oh, wait!

Cumulative oil production:

US: ~200bn barrels Norway: ~25bn barrels

(in all fairness, the population of the US is about 60 times larger ... but then again, most of the fund is not spent today)

IMHO the comparison is fair. The US is the largest oil producing country in the world. It just happens to also have to import oil because consumption is so high.

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