30/03/2005 11:17:34 am
The Big State, Carried by the Poor. Many people have commented on the table showing the corporate tax levels in the EU countries. One consequence of tax competition, and the fact that the things you want to tax are getting increasingly mobile, is that the defenders of big government desperately try to find other things to tax. They have found people with low incomes; they don?t move away as easily as capital or companies. Thus, poor people pay very high taxes in Europe. Of course governments can choose to do that, but they can not claim that the big state has anything to do with helping these people. It has nothing to do with solidarity or social justice - quite the opposite. The people with low incomes pay so high taxes that they can?t live off the money they have left after tax. So they get dependent on contributions from government. Which they have already paid for with high taxes... Here is a list showing the total taxes on work for people with low incomes in the EU (2002). These taxes are quite high in some of the new EU countries too, but in several cases they have decreased since 2002 due to the flat tax reforms.

Belgium 48,9 %
Germany 45,9 %
Sweden 45,9 %
Italy 42,7 %
Hungary 42 %
Czech Republic 41,8 %
Latvia 41,4 %
Poland 41,4 %
Finland 40,4 %
Slovakia 40,3 %
Austria 39,9 %
Slovenia 39,8 %
Denmark 39,8 %
France 37,8 %
Estonia 37,4 %
The Netherlands 37,2 %
Greece 34,3 %
Spain 33,9 %
Portugal 29,5 %
Luxemburg 27,3 %
Britain 24,7 %
Malta 18,1 %