[zaarn]

It's 19% for most stuff and 7% for some other stuff, on average it's closer to 16 o 17% on everything you buy and pay.

Once you account for the 17% being part of your remaining money, you get an effective incoming VAT tax rate of 8.5% (assuming you keep around 50%, if you keep more, this goes up)

I believe the highest amount of income tax you pay is around 60%, plus 8.5% you get close to 70%. However, most people will pay closer to 45 and 50% tax or less so a more realistic figure is 50% to 60% income tax.

It should probably also be included when you get benefits from things paid for in part by this, ie your insurances and pensions and such.

[Xylakant]

The highest amount of income tax you pay (Reichensteuer) is 47,48% (45% plus Soli). This number is a bit misleading though since the tax rate is a curve that starts at 14% for incomes above 8656 EUR and reaches a plateau of 42% at a yearly income of roundabout 53000 EUR. The highest tax rate only applies to the part of the income that exceeds about 250000 EUR. So the first 8k are tax free, for every EUR above that you pay a tax rate according to the curve and only the part of the income that exceed 250000 EUR pays the full 45%. So if you have a yearly income of 250001 EUR, the 45% get only levied on 1 EUR. It's obvious that the effective tax rate is far lower than 45% for any income that does not massively exceed 250k.

The blue curve in that graph is the nominal tax rate (Grenzsteuersatz) and the green curve the effective rate: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einkommensteuer_(Deutschland)#...

[zaarn]

I was probably misinterpreting/mismathing the wikipedia entry, it's been a while since I seriously dived into german tax law.