05 May 2006, 12:38 pm
(Perhaps this is not the time nor the place, and these discussions can turn really ugly, so bare with me)
"Nothing's sure, except death in Texas" ... or how was that saying?
I was listening to the public service radio today when I was cutting down trees near my soon-to-be house. The Washington correspondent Thomas Nordegren had visited a fund raiser at a local school.
He found out the school was short of funds. The place was full of parents, and soon it turned into an auction where people wanted to show their relative wealth by bidding on top of each other.
They raised a heckload of cash at that thing, but Nordegren couldn't help but asking the woman responsible, "Going through all this trouble and dealing with this spending hysteria, wouldn't paying taxes be a better idea?" -"Oh, you joker!" the woman replied, and took a sip from her watery Bud light. (as Nordegren himself put it)
As far as i know, and for your information, the swedish system pretty much breaks down like this:
1.) Start with a company with a lump of cash, 100%. First, employers pay almost 60% of their total salary expenses in central taxes, the remaining 40% goes to the employee as his salary. Actually, we call this remaining salary "pre-tax" 
This money funds pretty much everything, roads, railways, education at university level, health care, law enforcement, the cost to run a government ...
2.) The employees pay between 31% and 60% of the remaining salary in local taxes, to the local community. For local schools, sanitation, water and so on.
3.) When we buy something, we pay 25% in sales tax. Pretty much regardless what it is. Books are cheaper, some foods are cheaper. Of course, we put higher sales tax on crappy stuff, like cigarettes, booze and gasoline. On gasoline, I think it's about 900% sales tax ($7.7 a gallon).
So, to put it simple, when a company has $100 and that money is ready to "hit the streets", it gets cut down to about 18$ before it returns into a company's payroll.
Just how different is that from any other country?
What would motivate you to pay taxes like this? What changes would you have to see to be willing to apply swedish tax laws?
To each his own, I'm just saying ... You're welcome to try it out, Sweden is great this time of year
(EDIT: I'm going to try this poll thing ... Also, if anyone spots any errors in my calculations, give me hell!)
