@Lilienthal Once you take out my student loans and mandatory pension contributions, my marginal rate is 55% these days.

@Kaz Marginal rate has been 50% for me for a while. But "real" tax rate is almost impossible to calculate here. So many hidden taxes have been moved to utility bills, municipal taxes, hidden fees on "net" benefitis, ... It's a little absurd but it's very much in keeping with the local culture... ;)

As in many places cheating the government is taken to an art form here. But as a simple employee the most I can do is write off my transport. ;)

@Lilienthal Pretty much. I know a lot of the stuff in my own corner of Finance, and I know a guy who works in insurance who knows much of theirs.

But the government doesn't pay for that subsidy, instead they just put a levy on every home insurance policy in the country.

So if you own home insurance, congratulations, there's a hidden tax in there to subsidise people who bought homes on a flood plain.

@Kaz similar to the situation with car insurance - where all the insurers are required to pay into a pot for covering victims of uninsured drivers, the more uninsured drivers there are the more insurance goes up for everyone else

@motosubatsu Yep. Same with our regulator. We pay an (ever-increasing) levy every year to cover the costs of winding up companies who go under without enough assets left to pay for the cleanup.

@Kaz To be fair it's kind of how insurance works. Flood areas are tricky sure: you know going in that it's a risk so there's something to be said for not passing off those costs. But it's a short trip from that to not insuring pre-existing conditions and the like. Problem is fading boundaries between insurance and a social safety net.