Americans' tax burden is lightest in developed world - USA Today

[JohnWxy]

http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/2009-11-25-oecd25_ST_N.htm

You'd never know it from all the cable news chatter, but Americans bear the lightest tax burden in the developed world.

Total U.S. tax revenues in 2008 equaled 26.9% of gross domestic product, according to provisional figures released Tuesday by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. That figure – which includes local, state and federal taxes, including Social Security – was lower than the 1990 ratio and far below levels across Europe. In Denmark, the total tax take exceeds 48% of the economy. In France, it tops 43%; Germany, 36%.

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[laughingliberal]

1. Funny, the supply siders told us low taxes would lead to great economic strides for everyone

but we're doing worse than the countries with higher taxes. You don't think they lied to us, do you?

[napi21]

3. Maybe, but I think they really BELIEVE THAT! There are quite

a few people who really believe that you should be able to keep EVERYTHING you earn and the only Gov't services should bepolice, fire dept, and maybe building highways. They think that anyone who really tries can be successful that way, and those who are sick should be taken care of by charities. Listen to Thom Hatmann sometine. Almost every day he has a RWer on his show that argues that point.

[econoclast]

9. doing worse? by what measure?

remember, the tax burden numbers are reported here as a percentage of GDP. A fraction with taxes in he numerator and GDP in the denominator.

So, if a country's GDP is relatively bigger, the same tax rates produce a smaller percentage of GDP.

I was curious. So I pulled up the OECD annual GDP growth rates from 1984 thru 2008. I added the GDP growth rates up across the years for each country and compared them to the average tax burden in 2007 & 2008. Here is the result sorted from lowest tax burden as a % of GDP to the highest:

Country GDP TAX
Unit Stat 70.64 27.60%
Canada 66.97 32.75%
Unit King 64.30 35.90%
Germany 49.51 36.30%
Austria 60.36 42.60%
Finland 62.08 42.90%
France 51.01 43.30%
Italy 41.30 43.35%
Belgium 53.31 44.10%
Sweden 54.37 47.70%
Denmark 47.19 48.50%


Germany gets special dispensation for its abnormaly low GDP growth rates because it was trying to incorporate East Germany into the West. But other than that it really looks like the higher the taxes the lower the GDP growth rates.

[JohnWxy]

11. wonder how our debt looks compared to those nations? I also notice that our % gdp change

per year was trending downward from 2004 - 2008. THese are the only years I could find data for. I wouldn't mind seeing links for your data .

[JohnWxy]

12. Of course they were only talking about lower taxes for the wealtlhiest -

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mitchell-bard/republicans-in-the-house_b_162303.html

Of the myriad problems George W. Bush and his enablers in Congress left on Obama's desk, the most pressing is perceived to be the economy. So Obama's first major legislative initiative was the stimulus package. Under the market-cures-all philosophy of the last administration (and, in fairness, every administration going back to Ronald Reagan), the financial system collapsed as the greed and irresponsibility of institutions finally reached a tipping point. But what was even more acute during the last eight years was the historic and devastating redistribution of wealth, whereby Bush's tax cuts for the rich and unfailing support for corporate interests led to a situation where, as former Rep. David Bonior put it on Meet the Press on January 11:

"over the last 20 years, the top 10 percent took 90 percent of the income gains in this -- in the country.

And the top 1 percent took roughly 60 percent.

And the top 1/10th of 1 percent took 35 percent of that. I mean, it's skewed the wrong way."


The system of tax cuts and the like turned the surplus of the Clinton years into a massive deficit, even before the $700 billion financial bailout and current stimulus package came into play. And the Bush years allowed massive gains for the wealthy, all while middle class wages, in real dollars, fell.]

So, if nothing else, we should all be in agreement that the Bush years were a debacle, and that the policies of the administration need to be rejected, much like the bake sale/casino night of my analogy.
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[napi21]

2. only an idiot would believe you can constantly lower taxes

and not reach the TOO LOW point sooner or later!

[Prometheuspan]

6. inside of the current system true, but, kill the fed bank...

"only an idiot would believe you can constantly lower taxes"

right, they dropped taxes on the rich, the tax burden shifted to the poor, the poor can't carry any more load. Crunch. Its like
loading a mule with a 5 ton truck. Its not going to pull it, no matter how hard you whip, beg, or pray.


on the other hand, if we just got rid of the un fed fed bank and had congress print the money like it says in the constitution,

we could have zero taxes, and just have the congress bank government distribute the new cash to pay its bills.


the main problem is we keep making these deals with the devil...

[Art_from_Ark]

10. Where does the Constitution give Congress the authority to print money?

The Constitution, which was written in the aftermath of the "not worth a Continental" controversy, specifically mandates gold and silver to be the country's legal tender.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

4. Lightest at the top.

:cry:

[NC_Nurse]

5. And most of it's spent on the damn military it seems. No wonder we have a

social safety net full of holes. Sigh.

[eleny]

7. I'd like to know how the weight of our nation's debt compares to those other nations

[notesdev]

8. I wonder what the figures look like

if you filter out the top 1%. I'd wager that for everyone else our taxes are right in line with the rest of the developed world. When Goldman Sachs gets to pay all of a 1% tax rate (sadly, not an exaggeration) that will skew the numbers overall.

[RainDog]

13. and it is destroying our society.

I don't hope for apocalyptic scenarios but people are being pushed to the wall by the tax policies of both democrats and republicans since Reagan.

when or if the push back comes, I hope it's the rich who are dragged out onto the streets and not some working class schlubs.