Bruce Bartlett has done yeoman’s work comparing the tax burdens of various countries including the US which shows that contrary to what Republicans would have you believe, neither US corporations nor individuals are overly taxed relative to GDP.

He’s gone further and added state and local taxes to the mix, and then (here’s the point) he’s added in health care costs for each country. When that’s done

a substantial portion of the higher tax burden that Europeans pay is really illusory. They are really just paying their health insurance premiums through their taxes rather than through lower wages, as we do.

Ezra Klein has converted Bartlett’s table format to a graph which shows this even more clearly.

When you hear the right-wing anti-taxers screech about Europeans paying “exorbitant” taxes, remind them (not that it’ll do any good; they’re fundamentalist fools about taxes) that those taxes buy what we pay for directly through individually-paid insurance premiums or indirectly through lower wages when our employers buy health insurance for us.