Hacker News Reader

Incomes taxes or all taxes?

Income taxes.

As for sales tax, it's 7% here. Lower than most of Europe, and lower than some parts of the u.s., but not all parts of the u.s. But the low taxes more than make up for it. (about 1/2 compared to the u.s., but depends on your income level)

There's also a Value Added Tax (VAT), which probably makes comparing the Swiss and US systems difficult: https://www.ch.ch/en/vat-rates-switzerland/

I was writing about vat. That's basically sales tax. It looks like it's 8% now.

Hmmm, OK, although I note a VAT imposes higher compliance costs on an economy, and is harder to evade. And still, comparing to the US is very difficult, seeing as we have 50 state wide taxing regimes with much more complexity in what's taxed how much, many many many more local ones (the small-medium sized city I live just outside of has at least 3), and it's generally ignored on out of state mail order purchases.

Hard to compare, but probably not grossly larger in Switzerland.

I wonder how property taxes compare.

Ah, here we go, taxation as a % of GDP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tax-Revenues-As-GDP-Perce... Overall we, the US and Switzerland, track very well.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Switzerland which I'm just starting to look at.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com