Slight Disinformation At Snopes.com

I recently got this e-mail, and decided to investigate it at Snopes, and was a bit confused. I looked at Snopes and they said that Canadians only pay 29% for federal income taxes, if they make over 120,000, compared to a total tax burden of 40-45% for Californians.

Note what I said there. JUST the Canadian Federal income tax is 29% for anything over $120,887. Well, JUST the United State's federal income tax rate is 28% if single, and 25% if you are married for the $120k range.

But let's look at the TOTAL tax burden for those living in Canada. I input 35 years old, making 119,999 (the max for the site) filing in Quebec as married with 1 kid, and here is what I got.


Notice that Alberta is the only province with a tax burden below $50,000. And in Quebec, you end up paying 51% of your income to the government.

If you file as a single male with no kids the taxes jump to $64,025 (53%)

But what about large families? I put in again, 35, making approx $120,000, and married, but this time with 4 kids. Tax burden in Quebec was still slightly over $60,000, and all of the provinces were still over $50,000.

*UPDATE* I sent an e-mail to snopes about the information, but rather than acknowledging on the site that Canadians pay over 50% of their wages in taxes this was the response I got;

The writer of the e-mail states that he is "in the 55% tax bracket." The
term "tax bracket" specifically refers to the rate at which an individual is
taxed due to a particular income level and therefore excludes other taxes
(such as sales tax) which are not based on income levels.

- B

Also, they changed their original post from stating that Californians payed 40-45% of their income to federal AND state (not just federal as in Canada) to stating that they pay an equivalent amount. Snopes, the additional 4% (Canadians pay 29%, Americans Pay 25%) of $120,000 that the Canadians earn is $4,800. That's hardly free.