I got hit last year with the AMT because of a peculiar real estate circumstance. That was 28% in my bracket (without AMT I would have been at 25%). Add in SS and Medicare and that puts me at 40%. Tag on 7% in state tax, and I'm up to 47% (it was worse when I lived in Yonkers, NY, where you have an extra income tax, then that was 49%). My local property taxes are 15% of my salary. Yup. I have a house that is less than the national median for homes (sub 250k) and I pay over 10k in local property tax on it. In addition, my locality charges 1.5k in service a year. In total, I pay 64% in taxes a year. That's more than my friends in Italy pay total.

I realize that the Scandanavians are in the 70% range, but America is not the home of low taxes unless you're rich and live in Mississippi. Then and only then may you get away with cheaper taxes.

As for VAT and Sales Tax, can we really measure those?