[markvdb]

Well, you could always emigrate to Belgium: 33.99% corporate income tax, 37.84% social security contributions, 53.5% personal income tax most labour income above a cleaner's wage, 21% VAT, 10% real estate sales tax, 25% dividend tax, spectacular inheritance tax, combined with far too complex rules and regulations.

That's for your regular, main job. Side job income is burdened with taxes and rules more heavily...

[Joeri]

All of those carry caveats though. The effective corporate tax rate is 23.4% due to the various deductions, and the bigger you are the lower the percentage (which I find really unfair to small business, but it is the way it is). That personal income tax also includes county taxes, and you can choose to live somewhere that those taxes are near zero, so it can go down a lot depending on where you live. 21% VAT is pretty much standard across the EU anyway. And the inheritance tax in flanders is 9% for everything below 250.000 euro if you're in direct line of succession, high but not spectacular. Also, very low property taxes. Typically capital isn't taxed, only income is (from labor or capital). That's why despite such high rates of taxation there is a lot of capital in Belgium, because what you get (after taxes) you mostly can keep.

But I would agree labor and small business are taxed too much. They need to do something about that (and not just raise VAT like they're talking about, which is again basically taxing labor).