Kamilla I think you are the one misunderstanding me, where did personal come in in all of this?
This is just a discussion, and I have to comment if I feel something was not accurately mentioned, its nothing to do with technical terms or getting personal unless you had another agenda. If you prefer to google... go ahead I wasn't lecturing you, someone else might find my information useful, you don't have to make sense of it.
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What I meant is that you can't intepret tax in such a literal way. Saying that tax is high or low is ambiguous which beats the purpose of discussing the quality of life in the different countries we live in which was the point of discussion in the first place and thats why I asked you to rephrase . Its like telling the doc. unaumwa but husemi unaumwa wapi.
In the US you have to pay separate Health Insurance and Pension Schemes. For us our income tax includes all of that, pension and health insurance amongst other things, so I don't have to worry about any pension scheme or whatever. E.g If I earn 1400 € my income tax is about 11% of that. If you deduct 11% from my income, that has little effect on my life style. If I fall sick, I'll pay 11 euros only, if I'm pregnant, I'll give birth for free, If I spend the night at the hospital I pay an extra 11€.
Thats why i said that saying we are extremely taxed to a point that we are not left with any money to shop etc (CB's reply) is not reflective of our economic well being here, the difference between our country and the US is that you guys pay from your pocket rather your insurance and we pay from our income tax because our income tax consolidates all of that.
I love this country and its Economic plans and that welfare system, if it were not for the lousy social life and culture, I'd def. live here for as long as possible.