On an income of USD 100'000, you pay in:

Sweden: Taxes=37.5%, Soc-Sec=3.6%
Netherlands: Taxes=28.9%, Soc-Sec=10.6%
Austria: Taxes=23.6%, Soc-Sec=14.5%
Denmark: Taxes=37.6%, Soc-Sec=0.2%
France: Taxes=14.0%, Soc-Sec=22.0%
Germany: Taxes=20.1%, Soc-Sec=15.1%
UK: Taxes=25.4%, Soc-Sec=6.4%
Australia: Taxes=29.0%, Soc-Sec=1.5%
Ireland: Taxes=21.0%, Soc-Sec=7.3%
USA: Taxes=17.6%, Soc-Sec=7.7%
Singapore: Taxes=9.3%, Soc-Sec=10.4%
Switzerland: Taxes=10.8%, Soc-Sec=6.1%

For more details:
http://www.kpmg.ch/docs/Individual-I...urvey-2009.pdf

__________________
Caveat lector!

Unfortunately such comparisons don't necessarily reflect local income taxes (up to 9% or so in the USA), sales taxes, wealth taxes, property taxes or general markups on goods and services (the latter being so important in Switzerland that amazon.fr and amazon.de have threatened the viability of certain sectors, notably the book distribution industry.

Furthermore, in the USA health care and college education are very expensive additions to middle-class lifestyles.

Cost of lodging -- real estate prices -- is astronomic in London and New York, to name two places. On the other hand, lodging is virtually free in much of the heartland of the USA and rural England.

Better to look at the lifestyle comparisons.

For US city pairs, see http://www.moving.com/real-estate/co...ties/index.asp
For the human development index, see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index
Googling will give you various other city and country comparisons.

The cited kpmg report focuses on taxes and social security. The UBS report, which I posted on a previous thread, describes wages, prices and purchasing power. Zurich has the highest purchasing power in the world.

That's completely unrealistic. I know I pay more than 10% tax in total. They're ignoring the local aspect (as mentioned above), and that accounts for the vast majority of tax in Switzerland.

For some. I have in my library a copy of "Les Suisses sans nom" http://www.etresoi.ch/

"Highest purchasing power in the world" ... for whom?

Perhaps I know too much, from experience (including in Zurich), to take at face value comparative charts. Huff Post cited your article
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/0..._n_264245.html
But I surmise that statistics dependent upon rates of exchange should not be taken too seriously. And UBS shouldn't be taken too seriously either. We got a letter from them last year (from their PDG) saying our money was safe, that they were not at risk from the economic catastrophe facing the world. I wrote back to the PDG saying that it seemed to me they were most at risk for having scammed the US IRS. The PDG didn't write back.

I assume that this is some national average. BS is a high tax jurisdiction. Your mileage may vary!

The UBS PDG did not write back. But he quit. Thank you.

Expats pay Quellensteuer and unless you earn an amount where you do a tax return I *think* you might be missing out. Still, I live in Pfäffikon (SZ), and do a Tax Return and my feeling is I pay over 17% for tax and social deductions.
I still have few doubts that we are financially better off than most people in the world. There are certainly worst places to be an expat.

Funny the top countries on the above list are all very nice places to live peacefully and raise kids...

The notes to the KPMG data states:

• "In addition to federal taxes, the US calculation factors in the state of New York .... and the Swiss calculation factors in Zurich canton and community"
• "Tax calcs assume married, no children"

That statistics seems a bit odd for me.

Last time I worked in Denmark, I paid 48-49% in Tax, and that was only a 2-month Summer Job, and I know, you pay 8%Unemployment insurance + 59% tax as a high-earner in Denmark now, which you would be with $100.000 per year.

I can not open the link fro KPMG, so can not see if it is explained there, but otherwise, I guess, they have deducted pension contributions, or other costs, that are included in the danish taxes, but needs to be paid by yourself in othr countries.

Doc.

__________________
‘I had a bottle of whisky that I’d bought to take with me when I go to visit friends in Canada, but I thought, “I’m not opening that for him!”
- Gillian Duffy when Gordon Brown visited her

I've looked again at the KPMG charts. What comes to mind immediately is the foreign tax credit problem (wealth and social security taxes are not creditable as foreign income taxes). Also, the UK, Canada (except Quebec) and (I believe but don't know for sure) Switzerland do not impose social security tax on a retiree receiving benefits. The USA and Quebec and some other countries do, and these additional contributions should increase ultimate benefits.

Questions of cost of living, quality of life, transferability of pensions (and the effectiveness of any totalization agreement) remain. But the chart is a neat lecture aid nonetheless.

As always, US persons will be impacted differently from others. UK domiciliaries (and Canadians who are deemed tax resident in Canada though living abroad) and all those with laws like Canada (Denmark? France? imposing a tax on deemed sale at expatriation) will have to factor in estate planning and capital gain issues.

Yeh, just like the rest on the list. Odd that...

You raise complex issues about residents in one country receiving income from another country, etc. That is completely outside the scope of the report.

The study focuses on the usual situation of a working resident having wage income and paying income taxes and social security contributions.

And places to avoid when you're single, you'll be taxed to the hilt to pay for other peoples 'hobbies'

Get off my land

With those taxrates, who needs a gun to scare people away?

in the uk you also have council tax, assuming you live in half decent house you can add another 5% (in usd value) to that tax rate.

But medical care is typically free, which it isn't in most countries.

Swings and roundabouts.

The sophisticated persons who are the natural readers of such reports are not, however, likely to be in "the usual situation of a working resident having wage income and paying income taxes and social security contributions". They are the buyers of tax shelters and trusts and estate plans, migrants from one tax jurisdiction to another, readers of this forum, etc.

Within a single country, notably the USA and Switzerland, people do make choices based on tax comparisons; and there is a "flight to the bottom" in the sense of certain states and cantons competing with each other to attract tax exiles. Here is just one of many for the USA: http://www.retirementliving.com/RLtaxes.html and here is one for Switzerland: http://en.comparis.ch/steuern/overview.aspx

But internationally concepts are so different as to be practically irrelevant. Free or cheap university as compared with $50,000 a year; free or cheap health care as compared with possible bankruptcy for the inadequately insured or uninsured; cheap energy vs. highly-taxed energy; and so on.

And, for Switzerland, what index captures the economies of living close enough to a frontier to do one's shopping in a neighbouring country? I've mentioned elsewhere the symbolism of St-Gingolph where all but a couple of the shops are on the French side, and even the café on the Swiss side gets its pastries from the boulangerie in France.