Nationalized Healthcare - To Our American Friends

You are in the middle of the great debate. Which mode of health care delivers health care most efficiently; public, private, or a combination of the two. Many have pointed to Canada's system to argue that public delivery is the "best". Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. This I don't want to argue. But, you should have an idea about the difference in what we pay in tax compared to what you pay in tax.

We have roughly similar societies. We don't have to finance a per capita defense budget as large as yours but everything else is similar. There is a great Canadian income tax calculator at http://www.ey.com/CA/en/Services/Tax/Tax-Calculators. This provides the amount of tax on income owed to the federal and provincial governments on various levels of taxable income. Taxable income is a close proxy to salary.

At $50,000 of taxable income, $9,497 of tax is owed in the province of Ontario.
At $100,000, $28,036 is owed.
At $150,000, $50,453 is owed.

Canadian's can use RSP contributions (similar to IRA contributions) to lower taxable income by $20,000 and defer tax to retirement years but there aren't many other methods to lower tax.

This doesn't include federal and provincial sales tax of roughly 14% on non-staple items nor property tax of roughly 1% of the value our homes nor many other nuisance taxes and tariffs.

Dear Americans, calculate your total tax and add your insurance premium to it and I will bet that the sum doesn't come close to what our total tax bill adds up to. It may if you choose the public health care delivery method.

Good luck.

Right on