Tag Archives: tax burden

Stop the whopper about taxes, Mr. President

I won’t hang a goofy nickname on the president of the United States, such as, oh, “Lyin’ Donald.”

But for crying out loud, Mr. President, you keep repeating that whopper about Americans’ tax burden. Knock it off already!

Donald Trump is heading for North Dakota today to pitch his notion of comprehensive tax reform. He keeps saying that the United States is the “most taxed nation” on Earth. No! It is not. It’s not even close to the most taxed.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States ranks as No. 28 among nations on the total tax burden as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product. Those are 2015 figures, but my hunch is that they haven’t changed much in just two years.

The most taxed nation is Denmark, followed by France, Belgium and Finland. The U.S. burden is just less than Switzerland and a bit more than South Korea.

The tax burden percentage sits at around 27 percent, according to the OECD.

This is just yet another example of Donald Trump making things up to drive home some sort of political point.

Does he know he’s fabricating this tax burden notion? I suppose that if he makes this false statement knowingly, well, that would mean he’s telling an outright lie.

Imagine that, will ya?