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Comment by ffsm8 | Hacker News Reader

> Germany provides free university education even for foreigners, for instance)

Fwiw, Germany is also taking a big chunk ontop.

If you add taxes taken from your wage and VAT, forced social security payments etc all up, you'll end with a rough taxation of ~50% in UK. Of you do the same in Germany you end up over 60%, often nearing 70% unless you're a single income household with kids (they lower the tax burden a lot through deductions. Obviously still expensive, but your social contributions go down a lot.)

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It’s around the same in the US tbh. Just looked at my paystub and it’s saying 44% of my gross pay comes out. That’s taxes, oasdi, insurance (and I have a pretty good rate), etc. That’s not including 401k contribution. Then you have of course sales tax, property tax on house and car, insurance on those things, insurance on the mortgage itself

For your effective tax rate to be 44%, you'd have to live in California or New York, be single, and make over $600,000 a year. Insurance can be significant but is still around $12k a year total for most family rates.

(That pay would effectively be almost 10x what the average person in the US makes a year.)

so a typical HN poster, if not below the HN average?

I think your perception of this place in 2026 is greatly skewed.

What's next, you tell me you don't have a Putnam?

My first guess for that was a watch. My second was a car.

Not even remotely close to 600k lol. Looking at my situation, the federal tax rate is probably like 26%.

That’s without oasdi, Medicare, state taxes, city taxes, and insurance.

44% though was high, you’re right about that, because some of that tax was paid up front off of bonuses and will reduce over the course of the year.

I’ll probably end up around 35% without counting retirement and of course without counting all the other nickle and diming taxes that are paid post tax

Okay, so you live in California or NY and you're hitting a federal cap around the 32% mark on the progressive tax rate.

Ofc not counting social security, medicare, and that state tax that is around half as much as what you are paying federally (which is more than double many other localities).

So you were saying as a combination kind of effective tax rate, got it.

When you first said that 44% number, it was very fishy - because there is a federal cap at 37% :)

I hear this complaint often, and when we scrutinize the numbers, it's always, always exaggerated.

I'm in a dual income high earner family, and my rate is lower than that (35%). I live in a high income tax state. I included medical + dental + vision, but NOT life/accident insurance, flex accounts etc.

Are you sure you're not counting SPP contributions? And are you deducting the tax refund you get every year (which eventually takes into account all the deductions, etc you get)?

My net pay is only 41% (i.e. 59% is taken out) - but that's due to 401K, ESPP and other voluntary insurances I pay for.

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