In the UK I pay the following to the national government:Vertigo 7 wrote: ↑Sat, 30. Nov 19, 16:19That's interesting. I'm not familiar with how UK taxes are levied. In the US, we get taxed on our income. Federal Gubment takes a slice that goes to medicare/medicade, social security, and then to the general fund. Not all states have an income tax, but the ones that do usually spread out their slice for whatever they feel like but they don't operate any state level health care. Fuel taxes generally go towards infrastructure, at least highway maintenance and the like. Sales tax both fed and state are general coffers, typically. And, lastly, property tax goes towards county services like public libraries, emergency services (fire and county police), and other county government run things. Cities mostly collect their taxes from what has been paid to the state to cover their services, usually. Some tack on an "occupational tax" to income, but that's not too common.
* Income tax and national insurance (which is functionally just income tax with different rates, for boring historical reasons) are deducted from my income at an income-dependent rate.
* Various forms of sales tax - the rate depends on what I'm buying. The "standard" VAT rate for goods and services is 20%, but most foods don't get taxed, there's significant additional fuel duty on petrol, etc etc. (This is the main reason I don't know exactly how much tax I've paid.)
* Vehicle tax on my car.
* Capital gains tax and savings interest tax, in theory, although in practice I'm not actually in a position to pay any of these.
To the local government, I pay:
* Council tax, which is a tax based on the value of my house.
Various things get tax relief offset against income tax, in particular:
* Pension contributions.
* Charitable donations.
This is all reasonably complicated in theory, but in practice most people don't actually have to think about any of this - income tax is automatically deducted at the correct rates from your paycheck, posted prices in stores include relevant taxes, etc etc. You only actually need to do tax calculations yourself if your tax situation is more complicated than the standard, e.g. you have a lot of income from investments or you're self-employed.
Certain taxes are theoretically "for" certain purposes, but in practice that's not how the government budget accounting actually works, so I'm not going to bother attempting to explain that. (Even paying certain taxes to the local rather than national government is less meaningful than it first appears, because local authorities also get some of their income from the national government, and what exactly falls into the responsibility of national vs local government is complicated.)
Ignoring sales tax, my overall tax rate is roughly 30% of my income, again, noting that I earn well over the median and that this is affected by how expensive my house and car are and my rate of pension contributions and charitable giving. A single person on the median household income pays about 20% in income taxes.