(Caution: serious venting ahead ;-)

Same here in Belgium. Both the situation and the propaganda about it.

Total tax pressure is extremely high. Government services in Belgium are mediocre at best.

Imagine every public institute disease possible (rent seeking, no skin in the game, resistance to reform, employees not giving a shit, impossible size, …). Then multiply it by the fragmentation between Belgium’s many governments and departments and regions and bureaucracies. Then there's the EU.

But in the end it all depends on whom you ask.

The ever growing group of net receivers of the system are very happy. Multinationals and the very rich don’t care.

Even people who are employed in the private sector don’t care. They have a significant portion of their taxes paid for by their employer. So for them it remains an abstract thing as long as they don’t get fired.

The ones who sweat extremely high taxes the most are self employed people and SMEs. Basically most people who are personally involved with a business and are willing to work very hard to get ahead with something.

But hey, it’s social democracy so the majority is what matters! And boy let me tell you, the majority is very happy with socialism. I bet a lot of them would rather get rid of refugees and immigrants than abort socialism.

And since the majority has got it all figured out, I’m looking to emigrate, away from Utopia.

It’ll have to be Australia or NZ because Canada and the US have closed down. Anything Western outside the EU that’s just slightly behind on the curve is fine.

Yes, of course your anecdote is true and the poll the headline is based on must be lying. My own personal anecdote is that everyone around me thinks the tax level is appropriate and that they are sad whenever the government wants to lower taxes.

I think it's a little bit of both (It's the same in Sweden). It depends on who you ask obviously, but also how you ask.

Do people think they pay a lot of taxes? Yes. Too much? That depends on how you ask. If you ask "would you like to pay less taxes" the answer is generally no. The reason for that isn't that people feel they would rather pay less, only that they would like to get more for it. They are unhappy about waiting for surgery for 6 months (for example) - which they think shouldn't happen because they pay so much in taxes. But when asked whether that meant they'd like to pay less in taxes, the answer is usually "no, I'd like to have a shorter wait for the surgery"...

Even people in Switzerland think the same, although they have low taxes and top notch public services.