If we include all taxes, the real-world tax rate is much higher than the “official” income tax rate.
For those Americans earning between $34,500 and $106,000, the real-world middle class tax burden in high-tax locales is 15% + 25% + 5% + 15% + 15% = 75%. Yes, 75%.
Before you start listing the innumerable caveats and quibbles raised by any discussion of taxes, please hear me out first. Let’s start by defining “taxes” as any fee that is mandated by law or legal necessity. In other words, taxes are what is not optional.
If we include all taxes, the real-world tax rate is much higher than the “official” income tax rate. These “other taxes” vary from nation to nation. France, for example, has a “television tax.” It is mandatory, and since virtually every household has a TV this operates as a universal tax. The argument that this is “optional” is specious.
In every other advanced democracy, basic universal healthcare is paid by tax revenues. In the U.S., healthcare insurance is “optional” but this too is specious: in the real world, private healthcare insurance is mandatory because the alternative–having zero insurance–places your entire net worth and income at risk of catastrophic loss.
Having no healthcare insurance only makes sense if you have no real assets and a low income. At that point, your care will be provided by the taxpayer-funded Medicaid program, which is the default universal-care program in the U.S.
For this reason I consider the cost of private healthcare insurance in the U.S. the equivalent of a tax. We pay over $12,000 annually for barebones healthcare insurance, which amounts to about 15% of our gross income. Some countries pay for healthcare with a 15% tax, here we pay the 15% directly. There is no difference except the process of collecting the 15%. (The only real difference is that healthcare costs twice as much per person in the U.S. because the system is operated by cartels whose business model is fraud, opaque pricing and the elimination of competition via Central State regulation.)
