Most people in the U.S. — even many conservatives — think that the rich in America get tax breaks that exceed what the wealthy get in the more socialist countries of the world. Concurrently, it’s assumed that the middle class pays too much of the taxes.
Oddly enough, not true. The United States has the first or second most “progressive” tax structure in the industrialized world. Our tax structure depends most heavily on the rich. And now we are talking about dramatically increaseing this disparity — soak the rich even more.
The key is that the other socialist countries have high VAT, sales and gasoline taxes that draw funding from all the populace. Not so in America. To learn more about this topic, read this summation.
Daily Policy Digest
May 8, 2012
Taxation, American Style
Contrary to common belief, the American tax system is more progressive than those of most industrialized democracies. A 2008 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that the United States has either the most or second-most progressive tax structure of the 24 countries included in the study, says Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
This undermines common conceptions about the American government structure. After all, U.S. government spending as a percent of gross domestic product (GDP) is about 16 percent smaller than the average for the European Union. However, this says little about the source of that government revenue, which in the United States is disproportionately provided by the wealthy.
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Go to the link for the full summation.