Next time Leftists cry for higher taxes they should look at what happened in France:
This week, the French government announced that in the wake of widespread, damaging rioting throughout Paris, it would back off of its latest planned tax increases. French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe explained that the tax increases put “the nation’s unity in danger…This anger, you’d have to be deaf or blind not to see it or hear it.” Why, exactly, are people rioting? Because France taxes unleaded fuel at 64% and diesel fuel 59%. This tax is regressive, and harms those at the lower end of the economic spectrum most. France is not alone. Sweden taxes petrol at 64%; Netherlands at 68%; the UK at 63%; Finland at 64%. Not a single country in the EU taxes at below a 50% rate.
This is the dirty little secret that America’s democratic socialists don’t like to talk about: the income and consumption tax rates are insanely high across Europe. The top marginal income tax rate in Denmark is 60.4%; it’s 56.9% in Sweden; it’s only 39.0% in Norway thanks to the country’s massive sovereign wealth fund, powered by oil revenue. More importantly, those top tax rates apply at extraordinarily low incomes – the top tax rates hit people who earn 1.2 times the average income in Denmark (about $60,000 in the United States, if the rules were applied here). Similarly flat income tax rates apply in other social democracies. All of these countries also have value-added taxes, effectively a national sales tax. Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have VAT rates of 25%.
French 'Yellow Vests' Are Rioting Because Taxes Have Consequences
This week, the French government announced that in the wake of widespread, damaging rioting throughout Paris, it would back off of its latest planned tax increases. French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe explained that the tax increases put “the nation’s unity in danger…This anger, you’d have to be deaf or blind not to see it or hear it.” Why, exactly, are people rioting? Because France taxes unleaded fuel at 64% and diesel fuel 59%. This tax is regressive, and harms those at the lower end of the economic spectrum most. France is not alone. Sweden taxes petrol at 64%; Netherlands at 68%; the UK at 63%; Finland at 64%. Not a single country in the EU taxes at below a 50% rate.
This is the dirty little secret that America’s democratic socialists don’t like to talk about: the income and consumption tax rates are insanely high across Europe. The top marginal income tax rate in Denmark is 60.4%; it’s 56.9% in Sweden; it’s only 39.0% in Norway thanks to the country’s massive sovereign wealth fund, powered by oil revenue. More importantly, those top tax rates apply at extraordinarily low incomes – the top tax rates hit people who earn 1.2 times the average income in Denmark (about $60,000 in the United States, if the rules were applied here). Similarly flat income tax rates apply in other social democracies. All of these countries also have value-added taxes, effectively a national sales tax. Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have VAT rates of 25%.
French 'Yellow Vests' Are Rioting Because Taxes Have Consequences