Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Lucas]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26327114

[radcon]

More applicable to most teachers in Korea (from the same article):

These tax rates apply to single people with no children, on an average salary for their country.

Belgium - 42.80%
Germany - 39.90%
Denmark - 38.90%
Hungary - 35%
Austria - 34%
Greece - 25.4%
OECD Average - 25.10%
UK - 24.90%
USA - 22.70%
New Zealand - 16.40%
Israel - 15.50%
Korea - 13%
Mexico - 9.50%
Chile - 7%

[Lucas]

silly me!

[Rockhard]

These statistics are just for headlines. Anyone who knows anything about taxes knows it's a whole lot more complicated than that. You got deductions, exemptions, subsidies, loops holes, various levels of enforcement...

There's lots of ways to pay less than 10% in tax in Canada if you play your cards right. There's ample opportunity to pay more than 30% tax in Korea if you are stupid enough.

I think a far better measure would be to compare how much the government takes in compared to GDP.

Canada takes in 30% of GDP. South Korea takes in 25%. The US takes in 24%. That's the real tax burden. Some will pay more and some will pay less. But generally that's it.

[Milwaukiedave]

It's misleading because there are multiple taxes in Korea. The income tax is 3.3 and the VAT is 10%, then there are also other taxes depending upon whether you own a car or house. The VAT tax is also refundable for foreigners if you file a return here in Korea. How much you actually pay (in terms of money) depends on how much you spend so you could pay $300 in VAT taxes in one month and if you purchased something large in another month you are going to get zapped. I'm not saying this either in favor or opposition of the VAT tax, just pointing out what you are saying isn't correct.

[Rockhard]

[No_hite_pls]

[nate1983]

[Threequalseven]

Anecdotally speaking, I took home a much great portion of my paycheck when I lived in Korea. I live in the U.S. now, and I keep about 69% of my earnings (a $1,450 check becomes $1,000). My withholdings include Social Security, Medicare, Federal, State, retirement, and health/dental insurance.

In Korea, I kept nearly all of my earnings. Granted, I worked for a hagwon that didn't pay health insurance or pension. But I would usually keep about 2.0 million won out of a 2.2 million won check, which is around 91%. And that was after my phone bill, utilities, and internet were deducted!

[Rockhard]

[World Traveler]

In the U.S.

[byrddogs]

25% taxable income bracket for me here in China. No big deal.

[Rockhard]

[World Traveler]

A lot of Americans are happy. (The majority.) A good life can be had there. People need to stop obsessing over the upper 1% (members of this board such as radon,etc. in particular) and instead aspire to make a good life for themselves. The United States is richest country to have ever existed. Being born into that country is winning the ovarian lottery. It's a democracy. No one is controlling you there (except for laws which citizens through voting made for their own collective benefit).

[World Traveler]

The statistics used to track the share of income going to the top 1% have been criticized by Alan Reynolds. He points out that the Tax Reform Act of 1986 changed the way that income is defined on tax returns, which is the primary source of data utilized to compile income shares.[52] Among these changes includes the fact that beginning in the 1980s, many C-Corporations switched to S-Corporations, which changed the way that their income is reported on income tax returns. S-Corporations report all income on the individual income tax returns of the owners, while C-Corporations file a separate tax return and corporate profits are not allocated to any individuals. Prior to 1986, approximately one fourth of all American corporations were S-Corporations, but by 1997 this share had risen to more than half. In addition, by 2001 S-Corporations were responsible for about 25% of before-tax profits.[53]

This shift to S-Corporations means that income previously not included on personal income tax returns appeared there during this change, as S-Corporation investors directly pay taxes on corporate profit regardless of whether it is distributed or not. Furthermore, Reynolds points out in the same literature that tax-deferred savings accounts grew substantially from the 1980s onward, so that investment income to these accounts was not included as personal income in the years which it accrued. The CBO noted that at the end of 2002, $10.1 trillion was in tax-deferred retirement plans, and that $9 trillion of that was taxable upon withdrawal.[54] These numbers amount to potentially large amounts of investment income to middle-class families that are no longer reported on tax returns each year, but were reported prior to the widespread growth of tax-deferred retirement plans.

Panel data that track the same individuals over time are much more informative than statistical categories that do not correspond to specific people. The Treasury did a study in 2007 that tracked the same individual taxpayers over the age of 25 from 1996 to 2005 and found differing results from what the graph above shows.[55] The results showed that during those years, half of taxpayers moved to a different income quintile, with half of those in the bottom quintile moving to a higher one. About 60% of taxpayers in the top 1% in 1996 no longer stayed in that category by 2005.

On an absolute scale, the lowest incomes saw the greatest gains in percentage terms and the highest incomes actually declined. Half of those in the bottom 20% in 1996 saw their income at least double during these years, and the median income of the top 1996 top 1% declined by 25.8%. The reason that the results are so inconsistent with household income statistics is that household statistics do not track the same people over time; it is important to specify how many of the households in the top 1% in a given year were still there when looking at that category years later and gauging income gains.