In the lore of tax collecting, there is nothing more enduring than the image of the wily French farmer hiding his earnings in his mattress or the Italian maintaining a separate set of books to deceive the state treasury. The stereotype is at best only partly true. As a percentage of gross domestic product, European taxes are substantially greater than those in the U.S.
A society as diverse as Europe's naturally produces many variations. The payments needed to support Sweden's welfare benefits would strike most Americans as confiscatory—a worker earning $ 10,800...
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