2015-02-23T21:55:55Ztag:sursumcorda.salemsattic.com,2018:/isso/thread/post/a-brief-comment-on-taxes-from-life-of-fredtag:sursumcorda.salemsattic.com,2018:/isso/1141/40722015-02-23T21:55:55ZStephan<p>The analysis also paints too rosy a picture of Switzerland.</p> <p>Let's take Emmen, where we live. It's in Luzern, and the worst you can do there is a nominal tax rate of 5.7%. Sounds great, but here's the hitch: there's a multiplier that gets applied to that. In Emmen it's 1.6 for the Canton, 2.05 for the town of Emmen, and from 0.25 to 0.31 depending on which state church you belong to. In other words, that's en effective rate of 20.8 to 22.6% - and then you add federal taxes of 11.5% to that, topping an Emmen millionaire out at 34.1%.</p> <p>Still sounds reasonable, right? That's if you don't include mandatory salary deductions for social security, pension and unemployment benefits, the mandatory minimum health insurance, and the VAT.</p> <p>So while we're not as bad as Sweden, we're not the paradise people make us out to be. We actually have a country to run and Euros to buy...</p>tag:sursumcorda.salemsattic.com,2018:/isso/1141/40712015-02-22T22:18:17ZDad-o<p>There are errors in this analysis most easily shown in the Danish example. If one pays 67% in tax, one has 33% left. If one then buys goods with a 25% VAT one uses 1/4 of that 33% to pay tax, or 8.25% of one's entire income, so the effective tax rate is 75.25%, not 92%.</p>