On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 08:43:42 -0300, Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
> William ChopsWestfield wrote:
>
>>> http://www.greaterzuricharea.ch/content/05/downloads/
>>> oecd_tax_revenue2003.pdf (tax revenue as percentage of GDP, in 2003):
>>>
>>
>> An interesting way of expressing the statistic, I guess.
>>
>>> USA 25%
>>>
>> I wonder if it includes state taxes (~10% for me in Ca), local taxes,
>> social security (~11%), and medicare (~2%) ?
>>
>
> Good question. It probably includes all federal taxes, but it may not
> include state and local taxes -- which it should include, otherwise the
> comparison is close to useless. I've seen other sites stating similar
> numbers, which all seem to come from the same OECD numbers. I don't know
> where they did their data get from.

Virtually *every* U.S. Government document I've seen citing Federal Tax
Rates NEVER include Social Security or Medicare "contributions". That's
right, the government calls them "contributions" vs. a tax, therefore they
are not a tax... ;-)

Of course every employer or self-employed person like myself is required by
the government to withold/pay them so to me it walks like a duck and quacks
like a duck.

If you add the additional 13-15% tax burden onto the ~25% base federal tax
rate, all of a sudden the U.S. federal tax rate doesn't look so good.

Matt Pobursky
Maximum Performance Systems


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