If you're still working on your 2009 tax return, chances are you owe the IRS.
That probably also means you're griping about just how much of your money goes each year to Uncle Sam.
I don't begrudge your grumbling. I've done my share of tax-related grousing over the years and am likely to do more later this weekend.
It's never fun to owe anyone. And having to write a big a check to the tax collector in April really ruins an otherwise lovely spring. (Of course, you probably could avoid that by adjusting your withholding or making estimated tax payments, but those are topics for later nagging postings.)
Greg Mankiw, an economics professor at Harvard University, recently took a look at just where on the global tax payment scale we Americans rank.
"The most common metric for answering this question is taxes as a percentage of GDP [gross domestic product]," writes Mankiw at his eponymous blog where he makes, as he describes it, Random Observations for Students of Economics. "However, high tax rates tend to depress GDP."
For some purposes, continues Mankiw, a better statistic may be taxes per person. And he computed that amount using Taxes/GDP
x GDP/Person
= Taxes/Person. The results:
France = $15,556 per person
Germany = $13,893 per person
United Kingdom = $13,714 per person
United States $13,097 per person
Canada = $12,789 per person
Italy = $12,478 per person
Spain = $11,014 per person
Japan = $8,992 per person
Or, as Mankiw noted, the United States is a low-tax country when based on taxes as a percentage of GDP, but as judged by taxes per person, the
United States is in the middle of the pack.
Aren't taxes grand? Something for everyone to love … or hate!
Related posts:
- 'Tax us more,' say some rich Americans
- The burden on the richest taxpayers
- The good side of taxes
- A look a who's paying how much taxes
- Don't hate me because I'm rich
- Taxes, wealth and relativity
- Flight of 'golden geese' taxpayers
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