[jbn]

About France's tax system being deceptive, I would highlight that France makes it even more deceptive by having different regimes for different categories:

for instance, nurses or lawyers in France feel that the state levies from them a disproportionate amount of the super-gross (about 70%), and that these categories (I took 2, but in fact this is true for all "independents" in France) pay more than the rest of the population... which is not true, it is simply that the fraction of income that is levied as taxes is more obvious to those categories.

A regular employee does not even see most of these levies on their pay stub (it's called the "charges patronales", i.e. employers' contribution, but it really is a portion of wages that is socialized: this is money that belongs to the employee as wages, it's not something that belongs to the employer that pays it for the privilege of employing a person), and in reality what nurses/lawyers/independent perceive as outrageous taxation is just them paying "self-employment" taxes (as it's called in the US).

These taxes are there for good reason, but they are indeed masked from mere mortals. It would do a world of good for these things to appear (by law) on pay slips, for it would make people realize that the many public services that seem to be free are in fact very much not free at all. Indeed these public services (which are pretty good in France, IMHO) cost an arm and a leg, yet the system is rigged to make them appear free. If that's not deception, I don't know what is :)