Archives for October 17th, 2007

Slovenia’s Ministry of Pain Finance.

According to a recent article in Forbes magazine, Slovenia is the place to be if you love paying taxes and like to do it a lot. If you’re married, earn 200,000 euros/year, and your goal is to give up as much as of your money as possible to the government, Slovenia will oblige you the most.

This slide (featuring a curious choice of picture to represent Slovenia) lists the numbers that make Slovenia #1. The hypothetical married couple earning €200,000 would bring home €86,903 after taxes. This is five thousand euros more than the second most heavily taxed nation: Belgium.

Even worse, as this horrific chart makes clear: Slovenia is at the bottom every time. A single person earning €50,000 in Slovenia also gets hit harder than anyone else. Likewise millionaires.

There doesn’t seem to be much outrage about it. Probably because 95% of people are too busy evading taxes, defrauding the government, or cheerfully working off the books. The other 5% are idiot foreigners like myself, who are just too stupid to join them.

I think it’s also worth mentioning that this is a country whose legendary hero, Martin Krpan, is a tax evader.

You can read the Forbes round-up here.

(Via Capitalism and Freedom)