re: #259 Buck

Maybe this will help:

There are many ways to evaluate tax rates, and most of them point to our tax burden being rather low. For example, look at our average — or effective — tax rate, which you can arrive at by dividing total federal tax revenue by our nation’s gross domestic product. For 2011, the average tax rate in the U.S. is an estimated 14.8%, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That’s the lowest rate since 1950.

Here’s another comparison point: The folks at Citizens for Tax Justice — an organization advocating for fair taxation of the lower and middle classes — determined that our total federal, state, and local taxes in 2009 amounted to 22.6% of our GDP. Among the 28 member nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, that puts us in 26th place, with only Chile and Mexico having lower overall taxes.
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