[Christien]

This is really interesting - in fact I was thinking of posting a similar poll not too long ago, mainly because I'm curious to see what a typical middle-class American pays in taxes, income, sales and property.

We've of course got a much different taxation system here in Canada, one that was designed to be half way between European socialism and American laissez-faire capitalism. Since I've become a taxpayer in earnest about 5 years ago (I earned and paid taxes throughout university, but not to any real extent) it's really changed my views on the success of our system.

I think it was supposed to be the best of both worlds, but I'm starting to believe it's the worst. For a family in our income bracket, I think we'd have a much better lifestyle in either the US or a country like Sweden or Norway. The thing that's starting to really burn me up is health care. We pay taxes through the nose for it, yet it's constantly suffering government cutbacks, and because it's gov't provided, there are no alternatives. (private health care in fields covered by gov't coverage is illegal). If we lived in the US, we'd pay less taxes, but pay for use of medical services (or for insurance) and the kinds of hospitals we could afford would provide better and faster service than most here. If we lived in certain European countries, we'd pay a bit more in taxes, but receive much more in return.

Ok, enough of the rant. I pay about 40% income tax, plus another $12K per year for CPP (gov't pension plan - I pay employee plus employer contributions, since I own a one-employee (technically) company). We pay almost $4K per year property taxes. None of these are discretionary taxes, in that I have no say in the amounts. Add in sales taxes (7% provincial, 6% federal) which I don't really have much choice in, as I do have to purchase things, and I'm well over 50%, probably closer to 60%. And yet we had to wait 6 weeks to find a family dr. when we moved to a new city. Our public transit is a joke, and as such we waste more gas sitting in what was recently determined to be the worst metropolitan area (Toronto) in North America for commutes. Our schools are constantly having to fight to keep "non-essential" programs like music and sports, because of cutbacks to salaries and equipment funding.

Un-f$cking-real.

Ok, I need a drink.