Taxes around the world in 2019

My favorite topic: taxes

Having grown up in Eastern Europe and worked in the UK for 2 years, I know how painful it is to hand over around 50% of your gross monthly proceeds to the government. To add insult to injury, if you are a healthy, upstanding, self-sufficient, net-contributor citizen, you don’t even get to benefit from all those services you pay for every month.

In Romania, it’s easy to overlook all the social security and healthcare taxes, as they are drawn separately from income taxes and corporate taxes. They are, however, the biggest chunk of what the government takes from each salaried employee and every income-making resident. I won’t go into detail about how inefficient the system is with the ~50% they take.

The UK takes about 40% for mid-to-top earners and 45% for top earners. They offer much better services than in Eastern Europe, but the healthcare system has much to be desired, even with all the tax allocations.

The US has a more interesting system, with federal, state and local taxes. Even with all this stack, they don’t even come close to Romania or UK in terms of %. Sure, you pay for private healthcare and there are private schools and other non-state run services you’ll end up accessing. But you do that in Romania and the UK too, if you want top quality care, on top of taxes paid.