And I'm quite happy paying more taxes as it ensures that all my fellow Danes can get an education and get healthcare and not get bankrupt if they get sick.
We would also be happy to pay Danish taxes if we had the Danish government! But we don't. Our public spending is notoriously poor and ineffective and so yes, we do resent it.
Still cheaper than state income, federal income, sales, property, excise and fuel tax plus "fees" for everything the government requires you to do. Add in private health insurance as a wage cost to employees you never even see included as an a wage benefit and we're blowing that 33% out of the water.
If you live in New York City you could end up paying about 50% of your income in tax, which is similar to the highest European countries such as Denmark or (shudder) Belgium.
Thankfully New York is in America, where we have our freedom from social services like government-guaranteed health insurance, retirement, vacation, early childhood care, college tuition, elder care, and so on...You really have to feel bad for the Danes and Belgians, who are forced to get something in return for their taxes.
Because you're a nice goon and you care about your neighbors. And it end up being less expensive for yourself given the cost of your current plan and the cost you already pay in taxes for America's convoluted health care system. That being said, there is something to be said for America's freedom of choice and the ability to pay your way into a better plan.
Running a fire department on an individual or household basis is nearly impossible. The same cannot be said for your medical insurance, paid time off, and retirement.
@CartoJuggernaut because the math works. If we all have government-run healthcare the government has negotiating power with pharmaceutical companies and hospitals that private healthcare companies never had. This means cheaper healthcare costs for all of us. Thus your increase in taxes will be less than you were paying for private health insurance. Also, it's absurd to think that you're never going to use healthcare, childcare, college, or vacation in your life or your children's. Not to mention that you're already paying for services you don't use on a daily basis like public education, policing, fire and so much more through the government.
@CartoJuggernaut -- almost two years too late, but because lack of those services are a big factor in why the US has a life expectancy that is significantly lower than the rest of the heavyweight industrialized nations, the Channel Islands, Martinique, Malta, Greece, Guadeloupe, Portugal, Slovenia, Réunion, Cyprus, and lower also than the U.S. Virgin Islands, Costa Rica, Guam, Chile, Qatar, Puerto Rico, French Guiana, Maldives, Mayotte, Barbados, Curaçao, Lebanon, Cuba and Estonia (https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/). The factors that lead to that lower life expectancy affect the quality of life of all people in the US.
Iowa isn't a red state. It's purple and has a long history of progressiveness. It was one of the first states to legalize gay marriage, and was the home of arguably one of the most progressive political figures of American politics, Henry Wallace.
I don't know about "one of the first." I mean, before Iowa legalized it, several states allowed it, then banned it, and some allowed it again. Iowa was something like the 14th state to explicitly allow it, if you discount the fact that so many states that allowed it ended up banning it again before Iowa even initially allowed it.
When you break it out by income bracket, a lot of things show up that are contrary to popular opinion.
For example, if you look at non-elderly taxpayers in California or Texas, you'll see that for the bottom 60% of earners, California offers lower taxes than Texas. The bottom 20% there is a very large difference in particular. It's only the wealthy (really about the top 5-10%) where California actually taxes more.
Most states are actually regressive that way in taxation - very few states tax the bottom 20% less than they do the top 1% as a percent of their income (CA, DE, MN, NJ, VT). But the press reports based on taxes for the wealthy or averages, which are skewed towards what is done for the wealthy rather than the median.
Texas doesn’t have state income tax. Not saying this is better or worse, but California definitely doesn’t have a lower tax rate from an income standpoint. Our property taxes are very high though.
For example, the bottom 20% of households by income pay a total federal tax burden of about 1.3% on average (-10.9% on income taxes, 9.4% on payroll taxes, 0.6% on corporate taxes, 2.2% on excise taxes). The top 1%, by comparison, pay an average of 31.6% (24.4% in income taxes, 2.2% on payroll taxes, 4.8% on corporate taxes, 0.2% on excise taxes).
You can also structure your income to avoid taxes, particularly if you're wealthy. I don't do anything unusual, but my investment income is generally taxed between 0% and 15%. My earned income I'm in a 22% tax bracket, but pay an effective total income tax rate of about 12%.
I mean yeah that shouldn't be a surprise. But also many of the states with the highest life expectancies, HDI, Quality of Life, equality, best education systems, the list goes on.
I wonder whose interests its in to try and convince people that healthcare, education, jobs, infrastructure, quality of life, etc is less important than lowering taxes.
So I might as well join in, people argue that high taxes are bad and the response is it makes a better quality of life which is true in most situations but, in reality, we wouldn't need as much taxes if everyone was a better person as in raising their children (CPA), and drug companies weren't so cruel with their marked-up prices, and good education wasn't so hard to find but that's a perfect world and in reality, humans are flawed so our governments have to balance excessive taxes with good quality of life... or at least I think.
p.s. : I know there are exceptions like if a parent physically isn't able to raise children but still...
but that's sort of the anarchist/libertarian philosophy to governance (and why it fails from the onset): because people aren't all wonderful, selfless, and responsible. Corporations are greedy, cruel, and corrupt. And there will always be someone who seizes whatever power, wealth, or authority that others voluntarily surrender, or abuse whatever is given to them, if there is nothing in place to stop them from doing so. Is it possible for there to be overreach in the opposite direction leading to tyranny or oppression? Laws or law enforcement that are overly draconian and onerous and more stifling than helpful? Can bureaucracy get out of hand and needlessly self-perpetuating and self-enlarging? Yeah, of course. But a healthy synthesis will never be all one or the other. Those arguing otherwise are either naive or have an agenda and ulterior motives.
Yeah, that was a pretty amazing response, but I actually like taxes now that I think about it because... well, you know what they say, without them the only certainty would be d e a t h.
Kind of a deceptive quiz - by making it based on the percent of personal income as opposed to marginal rates - you make some of the most burdensome tax states on the middle class drop off the list of high tax states. California has the highest income taxes of any state by far but because apparently the amount of wealthy people residing in the state - it falls off the list.
Income tax is only one portion of these percentages, if you look at the source it also includes property taxes and sales taxes in the total tax burden. Also in case you were curious, California is sitting at #12 and was in the top 10 last year
Another thing to keep in mind, a state's tax burden isn't necessarily an equivalent to how expense a state is to live in. This quiz might be more what you're looking for which is state's with the worst affordability using metrics such as cost of living, median income, housing affordibility, etc. Not just taxes as this quiz is.
Wouldn't the ideal be to have the highest level of services with the lowest taxes?
Taxes on their own aren't a positive. Surely you'd agree that if the government raised your taxes and then just wasted them, that wouldn't be a good thing?
Of course. But the more money a government has to invest in a nation's wellbeing (ie in its hospitals, education and transport networks) the healthier in many senses that nation will be. "Waste" is never quantified by anti-taxers, it's just used as a throwaway slag-off line that (if people believe them) would simply cause a reduction in the services required to run a country well.
Running a fire department on an individual or household basis is nearly impossible. The same cannot be said for your medical insurance, paid time off, and retirement.
And one of Iowa's senators for 30 years, Tom Harkin, was quite liberal and the author of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
When you break it out by income bracket, a lot of things show up that are contrary to popular opinion.
For example, if you look at non-elderly taxpayers in California or Texas, you'll see that for the bottom 60% of earners, California offers lower taxes than Texas. The bottom 20% there is a very large difference in particular. It's only the wealthy (really about the top 5-10%) where California actually taxes more.
Most states are actually regressive that way in taxation - very few states tax the bottom 20% less than they do the top 1% as a percent of their income (CA, DE, MN, NJ, VT). But the press reports based on taxes for the wealthy or averages, which are skewed towards what is done for the wealthy rather than the median.
For example, the bottom 20% of households by income pay a total federal tax burden of about 1.3% on average (-10.9% on income taxes, 9.4% on payroll taxes, 0.6% on corporate taxes, 2.2% on excise taxes). The top 1%, by comparison, pay an average of 31.6% (24.4% in income taxes, 2.2% on payroll taxes, 4.8% on corporate taxes, 0.2% on excise taxes).
You can also structure your income to avoid taxes, particularly if you're wealthy. I don't do anything unusual, but my investment income is generally taxed between 0% and 15%. My earned income I'm in a 22% tax bracket, but pay an effective total income tax rate of about 12%.
Confused? That's all thanks to the CPA lobby. :)
p.s. : I know there are exceptions like if a parent physically isn't able to raise children but still...
Taxes on their own aren't a positive. Surely you'd agree that if the government raised your taxes and then just wasted them, that wouldn't be a good thing?