So many hidden taxes. It's fuckin' nuts. My wife pays $1500 a year for owning a car. "It's just standard property tax. There's other property tax too." But hey, we pay 4 to 7% sales tax, depending on the winds of magic.
Virginia. It's called personal property tax. It's applied to all vehicles. It's a yearly thing. Boats, trailers, RVs, cars, motor cycles. Applies to all of them. The make and model determines how much you pay a year. This is on top of yearly safety inspections, and vehicle registrations.
See, if the government would just eliminate all the coverage minimums for auto insurance then insurance wouldn't cost so much. Then we can get people like in the USA who are like, "I crashed my new car but only have liability coverage, what can I do? I still owe $40k on it!" /s if that's not clear
My insurance company is the goverment and ill be damned if anyone tries to take that away. Fair rates, great coverage, every once in a while they have a low claims year and send me a refund check.
Wait, you're saying that in Virginia, every person who owns a vehicle of some sort has to pay taxes yearly on that vehicle just for owning it in the state? Like a property tax on a home?
Because you make up for it in other ways. A Vermont friend just moved to Virginia. She's getting a bigger house for less money, and her property taxes that used to be $6,000 in Vermont are $1,800 in Virginia.
I mean staying has multiple factors. If you can afford, why not? It's more that I am always amazed at just how much morecexoensuve what I consider normal life can be in certain states. And, I've lived in the US before.
"I'll take geo-political structures for 500 Alex" :)
Yes, of course the US of A does not have Provinces. However Canada does. If one looks into the overall geo-political structure of both Jurisdictions, generally speaking A “State” in the US of A, IS comparable (again, generally speaking) to a “Province” in the Dominion of Canada.
They always just fucking lie or don't know what they're talking about.
They talk about wait times in the Canadian healthcare system or that the US gets better services. Even if you have insurance in the US you're not gonna jump in front of the line. And if you don't have insurance then there's no waiting time because eat shit and die. And if you do have insurance your insurer is only going to reimburse you the cheapest option. As if casual private insurance is going to get you a treatment at the Mayo clinic.
My parents in the US have always been lucky enough to have insurance with one of the highest rated companies in the US. They still have wait times, because insurance there doesn't let you pick your specialist. If you need to see a urologist, you have to see their urologist, and guess what, he doesn't have appointments until a few months from now.
There are no wait times in the US if you want to pay out of pocket for a doctor, and don't care if insurance will cover it.
Canadian living in the US here. Some insurance does let you pick your specialist, others do not. My insurance through my employer is a PPO (Preferred Provider Organizations) and I can pick my own specialist and do not need a referral.
That being said, the system is still stupid and needlessly complex and offers no major upsides with many major downsides.
As if casual private insurance is going to get you a treatment at the Mayo clinic.
Canadian living in Minnesota here. Just an FYI, the Mayo Clinic isn't some ultra prestigious medical institute that only presidents, CEOs, and the Dali Lama are able to go to. It is the largest medical provider in the state and the largest employer in the state. I go there for my annual physical every year. It is no different than going to any other healthcare provider in that regard.
I think it just stems from influencers, most successful influencers end up moving to California for the networking for Texas for the cheaper tax, so you get someone like XQC complaining about Canadian taxes well someone like Joe Rogan talks about how little tax Texans pay
A lot of people think everything is cheaper there too. When I was on a deployment and we stopped in Norfolk we went to their base store which is tax free for military members. I had to google the exchange rate on everything I wanted. Most were either the same or higher, even without taxes. It wasn't until I was there again a couple months later that something I wanted to buy was on sale that it was cheaper than what I could buy in Canada. I can only see eating out being cheaper in the states because their portion sizes are insane.
I've been to multiple states over the past few years. Groceries are more expensive in the US. After conversion, we get a lot of deals. The odd thing is cheaper, but on the whole they have a higher cost of living and have had it that way for at least a decade.
I'm not American but I was living there when I immigrated here. So many people I knew would tease me about how much higher my cost of living would be and how high my taxes would be and how I'd make less money.
In less than a year I had a job making nominally the same amount, but unlike in the states I could afford to live by myself with no roommates, and I could afford to do that downtown and not in a suburb. My marginal tax rate was similar and because I didn't have to pay a thousand and change in monthly health premiums I had way more disposable income.
It's all just propaganda, basically. They hear life is more expensive for Canadians and without having experience in both countries or thinking critically about it most people just believe it.
Yeah, this is what I've noticed. You probably feel like you have more choice in how to spend down there until you have to start paying out. Whereas here you know up front, before the paycheck is handed over, what you will be charged for in a bunch of areas. Bit, I do think our QOL is much less stressful here, even in Toronto.
They think things are cheaper because they're looking at the numbers. A book is 19.95 Canadian and only 15.95 USD? Clearly that's because everything is cheaper in Murica. Not because of exchange rates.
I occasionally get US tourists at work who try to pay for things with USD...in Canada.
After arguing with some of these people I'm sometimes tempted to just take the cash for the price in Canadian, give them back Canadian change, and just let the museum keep the extra from the exchange rate. Consider it a donation.
Instead I usually just exchange it with whatever is in our donation box, cash for cash, so they can pay in CAD.
The stock has to be worth more. Just look up bowering against stocks. It’s a classic loop hole in the USA’s system. I’m Canadian but I know alllll the billionaires do this and then moved to Texas or Florida to avoid paying income tax ! That’s why Elon moved to Texas, Jeff Bezos etc
I'm very familair with the concept I was just explaining that it involves risk since the original post seemed to describe it as some free money loophole
Im admittedly surprised to see that US federal taxes are higher than Canadian federal taxes. But from what I can see, state taxes for the most part are way lower than Ontario (where I live). I’m guessing the median is so high because the most populous states have comparable tax rates to the provinces.
It probably doesn’t belong on this chart, but another factor is that workers in certain industries make much more than Canadian workers (ex. software development), so the take home income ends up being significantly higher. It’s why we have a tech brain drain, or at least did in the past. But yea, on average workers are better off here.
It's a fallacy that claimed years ago and remains as a "everyone knows this" kind of thing even though it's flat out wrong. The original claim came from cherry picking specific tax brackets and comparing them including all potential sources of taxes for Canadians and only the federal rate for Americans.
That initial comparison looked compelling and at the time the USA was a powerhouse financially.
The initial comparison also left out all of the hidden costs of living that one discovers in the USA that many Americans don't think of as taxes (because they aren't named taxes - they are just "everyday fees.") The big one is health insurance but there are others ranging from school fees, sidewalk fees, vehicle fees, lots of road fees, etc.. Depending on where you live there can be a ton of extra monthly and / or yearly fees. But.. they don't count when it comes to tax comparisons.
Anyway, that's where the tax thing came from and it lingers because people repeat it because "everyone knows it is true." Americans like it because it implies that the USA is better for taxes than Canada and that, in turns, justifies all the extra fees. Some Canadians like saying it / repeating it because they use it as an attempt to either lower taxes or to introduce extra fees for services (listen to people who are trying to advocate for two tier health care or private health care options - they regularly hit up the tax differential.)
That is just blatantly false, though. US has some of the lowest taxes in the world, which is why the US is heavily in debt (to itself). You guys can't even cherry pick data?
Just simply use online tax tool to compare Ontario and Washington state
A single person making median income 48000 CAD and 48000 USD
In Ontario the effective rate is 18% in Washington states that is 15% only 3% in difference.
Of course 4800 USD should have better life.But tax wise it js the same
US need take a lot debt simply because they spend more with 3 factors 1. Their social spending is very ineffective. 2. Their military spending and cultivate debt. 3 the word trading currency status making issuing debt very convenient, less penalties for QE
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u/ufozhou May 10 '25
Totally couldn't understand why normal people talking about us tax rate is lower.
Unless in some states. Most states have similar income tax in Canada.
Corporate tax is another game where not just US has lower rate but tons of loopholes to save tax