The 7.5% is not income tax - it's just salt-duty! If we were to add a 7.5% duty for salt alone to your current 50% tax burden, I'm sure you'd be marching too.

Suspect the average early twentieth century Indian farmer would kill for the OP's state subsidised education, healthcare, unemployment benefits and pension too, never mind his disposable income after tax...

The impact of taxes depends on how much you have to begin with. Would you kill to have both that laborer's tax rate and that laborer's wages?

You're probably thinking of just your top marginal rate on income tax?

No, I mean that my income, capital-gains, sales & property taxes, along with fees like those for my car registration, equal roughly half my total income.

Seems highly unlikely unless you're not including the gains from your capital gains in your ratio. Do you know how the marginal rates work?

> Seems highly unlikely unless you're not including the gains from your capital gains in your ratio.

Nope, I am. It's remarkable how high one's tax burden is, once one starts to actually track it. All those sales taxes and fees add up.

> Do you know how the marginal rates work?

Yup. I'm calculating (total government costs)/(total income), for all of my income and all costs-of-government.

You're hitting the top marginal rates and seeing sales tax be a large burden? Weird. Are you spending more than you're currently earning?

I wouldn't say that sales tax is a large burden, but 8½% adds up over time.

No, I spend less than I earn, and save quite a bit. Some of that savings is tax-advantaged, but overall I pay a huge amount of my income in taxes & fees. I don't mind that taxes exist, really; I don't mind paying for a social safety net. But I think something's wrong when half of my productive labour & investment income is taken from me every year.

So you have an extremely high income and no investments? The top marginal rate is 40%, and that only applies to what you make over $420,000.

Maybe, but your 50% left cover your expenses for food, clothing, shelter, medicine, etc. I doubt that the 93% the average Indian laborer or farmer had covered his basic necessities. And as another posted said, this was just the salt tax.