Quote Originally Posted by Major Robert Dump View Post
Doh, I forgot about payroll tax. Payroll and Income both are @40%, corporate around 10%, and the final 10 is comprised of the estate tax, excise taxes and everything else. Color me newly informed.

At the very base of the issue, it is unfair taxation. It is double taxation. But at the same time, I really don't care, I just accept it as it has always been around and always will be around.
I don't follow. You mean that the employer has to pay one sort of tax on wages before, and the employee has to pay another sort of tax after pay day?

In the Neth's employers have to withold taxes on wages too, but legally speaking they do so on behalf of the employee. The employee only has to pay taxes over his wages at the end of the year if it turns out that not enough taxes were withheld in the first place - usually that's the case when he has other sources of income besides his job, so that he ends up in a higher tax tier.

Double taxation is usually understood (here, at least) to refer to a cross-border situation where different tax regime cause a good or service to be taxed twice for the same reason. Lemur's post, while correct, is also rather obvious when you think about it. Every coin and bill, except those recently printed, have changed ownership lots of times and each transaction has been taxed. The "death tax" may sound unfair to people, but at the core it's still about a transfer of money and assets from one person (now dead) to another. There are good arguments against the tax, but not that it's double taxation