Quote:
Originally Posted by nfotiu
The point I was trying to make is that after deductions, which are much greater in the US, most Americans are paying more like in the mid 20% income tax at most. Alberta is not a great example to compaer either, as their budget is highly subsidized with oil money.
Your point stands though that someone making 40-50,000 a year or less is going to pay a much higher percentage of their income to health care, than someone making 200k in the US. Someone making 200k in the US is paying a lot less towards health care than someone making the same in Canada.
EDIT: I don't pay any state payroll taxes, btw.
I do think my point stands that I'd be paying at least 10% of my income more to taxes(inc health care) even in Alberta than I am paying in Virginia.
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That's fair--and my effective tax rate was probably lower than 25% too. Of course, the two systems are hard to compare in that sense, since the effective tax rate in Canada depends on exactly how much of their income is subject to which tax rates. Also, child care costs in Canada are deducted from taxable income, so our example of a family of 4 making 50,000 dollars would probably have an effective tax rate much closer to 15%. (indeed, only 10,000 of their income would be taxed at 22%.
So that lowers the Canadian tax burden quite a lot, but much less so if you're making, say, 250,000 dollars. What concerns me in the U.S. is the burden on the middle class, which seems both unfair and a drag on the economy by reducing after-tax income among the people likeliest to spend the money that they have.