[Gllug] [OT] Times Article on ABD was Fighting a virus

[John Winters]

> On Wednesday, 21 Feb 2007, John Winters wrote:
>>I suspect that Christopher's calculation refers solely to the part of
>>your salary taxed at the higher rate.
>
> Which is obviously nonsensical, of course.
>
>>As a general purpose metric I prefer to look at the modal tax band (in
>>the case of the UK this is currently 23% IIRC) and then work out what
>>percentage of your total earnings (including both bits of NI, and VAT on
>>what you buy) in that band goes to the government.
>
> Here's that assumption that I use my entire salary buying VATable
> stuff again. I don't.

No - that's not what I'm assuming.

The calculation is not intended to work out what any individual actually
pays.  Instead it's intended to provide a comparative metric for the
purpose of seeing which countries are more or less heavily taxed than
others.  It uses the 23% tax band and includes VAT because both are the
modal case.

The figures which this method produces are pleasantly close to the
alternative calculation where you take the entire tax revenue of a country
and see what fraction it is of the country's GDP.

Cheers,
John

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