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Comment by pwthornton | Hacker News Reader

If you are a highly-compensated American worker, add up your federal income, state/local income, property taxes (which are often incredibly high in some American jurisdictions), social security taxes and medicare taxes.

And then look and see if the taxes are actually higher in Canada.

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I am a "highly compensated worker" who doesn't live in CA. My effective tax rate over the past 2 years was 28%. That's the grand total without any weasel moves to avoid taxation. I pay ~10k/yr in property taxes.

The reason I bring up property taxes is that the vary wildly in the U.S. I paid about $3,500 for my place in the DC area area. We have industry and income tax, so my property taxes are rather low. My parents live in Ohio and pay around $12,000 a year for a similarly priced home.

Our effective tax rate was 34% in CA. :-/ Not counting sales taxes or property taxes, since we rent and the amount that's passed on to us isn't clear. Our marginal tax, though, is 52%.

I mean it's not fair to add property taxes if you're not gonna do the same but you do have a valid point.

It's way different if you're in Alberta (flat provincial tax) vs NY than for example Quebec (biggest tax burden in North America) vs FL for example. Those things do need to be considered.

In my case, the difference between Quebec and <insert any state> was a no brainer.

The reason I bring up property tax is that it varies so much in the U.S., and places without income taxes often have onerous property taxes. I live in MD, right outside of DC, and my property taxes are about 1/3rd of my parents in Ohio for very similarly priced homes.

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