Nope I'm trying to bake cookies, which will prolly fail, used to much eggwhite /facepalm.
Sales taxes...thats the percentage taxes they add to every product being sold? If its that, we pay 21% here on most things (cept bread, milk, basic stuff, thats 6%)
even electricity and water we pay 21% atm (which is an outrage)
If your sales tax is that high then whats your income tax, or better yet whats your employers required income tax liability? Some nations are so heavily taxed that the employer pays maybe half to the government as it does the employee for their "tax".
Ex: Your salary is $50,000 USD per year
But your employer is required to pay an additional $25,000 USD to the government as an "employment tax". This means your actual salary would be $75,000 USD. Further your government is taxing you 50% real on that salary and thus are getting $50,000 USD per year for you.
Quote:
Employment income is also subject to social security contributions. Employee contributions are 13.07% and are deducted by the employer. In addition, the employer contributes about 35% of employees wage.[3] No ceiling for contributions apply on contributions for either employee and employer
Wasn't far off, 48% additional tax on top of the 50% Belgium already charges.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Belgium
A good way to tell what a country is really doing with it's tax is how much tax revenue vs GDP.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP
If we dig further we find that Belgium (just because it's a topic for comarison here) spends almost nothing on national security. Anyone that wanted to take your land and oppress your people is free to do so without even a token of resistance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
Belgium is a member of NATO and not only a member but a founding member.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_NATO
Your national security is protected by other NATO nations, which means it's protected by the USA basically, the same country we're comparing your social programs to.
http://federal-budget.insidegov.com/l/119/2016
There we have the USA spending, of which ~15%, $541 Billion USD, is military related. Of the Tax revenue ~82% are from the citizens employment (Employer Payroll + Required Withholdings).
Essentially the US Tax payers are paying money to support your national defense so you don't have to and instead can spend that money on your own social programs. Now the US could do the same, cut our military spending from $541bn down to $200bn and still have more then adequate military to protect ourselves. We could take that $300bn+ extra and use it to fund all sorts of amazing social programs or even pay down the national debt. Unfortunately it would mean all those European Socialist countries would have to gut their own welfare programs and provide for their own national defenses.
Think long and hard about the reality that US tax payers are funding European national defense and that giant expenditure is the reason your not speaking Russian.
