Countries with lower taxes and a better quality of living?
I’m currently stuck in Denmark, and it feels like I’m in a never ending financial tug of war with the government, saying goodbye to 50% of my hard earned cash each month. Add a 25% VAT on everything and throw in some hefty taxes on utilities, electricity etc, and you’ve got a situation that has me questioning if this is the life I signed up for.
Living in a place where the cold weather feels like an extra tax on happiness, I’m craving a change.
I’m all about individualism, self-sufficiency, and independence. So here’s the big question: Where in the world are you guys finding that sweet spot between low taxes and a great quality of life?
As I contemplate my escape plan, Cyprus, Portugal, and Dubai are on my radar. I dream of living in a country where taxes don’t feel like daylight robbery. But, and it’s a big ‘but,’ my online income isn’t quite flexing its muscles enough for a move to the streets of Dubai just yet.
So, where are you residing? What’s the tax scene like in your corner of the world? Are you doing a happy dance every payday, or are you, like me, wistfully staring at your bank statement, wondering where all your money went?
And let’s not forget the living conditions. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your overall quality of life?
I’m not just asking for my benefit, this is a collective quest for a better lifestyle.
Your input is greatly appreciated!
(Just to be crystal clear, I’m not fishing for a lecture on why I should be grateful for my current Danish situation or any unrelated personal opinions. If your input doesn’t contribute constructively, save it for another time.)
Yeah no.
I’m from the UK:
We pay absurd rates for an NHS that only works if you need emergency surgery. Otherwise get fucked, have mental health issues? You’ll have killed yourself by the time you’ve reached the end of the wait list and even then, you’ll be given CBT which doesn’t work if you have an IQ above room temperature.
The police don’t do their fucking job because they don’t have the resources to do so. So burglaries mugging etc. go past uninvestigated. Good policemen are constantly leaving the service because wages are too shit.
Ambulance wait times if you don’t live in the city means you’ll probably die.
Inheritance tax that doesn’t work and merely fucks over the ever shrinking middle class that live in cities. The actually rich can just avoid it.
Public services that have been privatised which should actually be nationalised, have been asset stripped, these include: utility companies, public transport, inter city rail etc. Royal Mail has been around for 600 years, in 8 short years of privatisation they have managed to destroy it and make it bankrupt.
Water companies who constantly raise costs and need government bailouts because they haven’t bothered to invest in infrastructure and instead just stripped it of assets. They also massively pollute our water ways and over drain our natural acquifers to the point they will be completely dry in the near future.
The government has been selling public assets over the last 13 years, introduced policies that have literally caused people to die. They embezzled plenty of money especially over Covid. Tax bands have not at all moved with inflation to the point that I think they’ve been the same for the last 10 years. There is rampant wage stagnation (15 years worth of it) and thus brain drain. 1/3 of new doctors in the UK intend to leave the UK once their two years mandatory training is up. STEM graduates often are choosing to leave the UK or go into finance because the pay is shit or there’s no jobs.
Want a scape goat statement? Only 3 regions of the UK aren’t a deficit to the treasury. London only keeps a third of the tax it generates of which they can only directly control 7%. Yet we subsidise these moronic plebs up north and then they go do idiotic things like vote for brexit or the tories, which are the very things that are fucking them over. Why should I pay absurd tax on my shitty wage of which a majority has to get spent on rent, only for some cretin up north to tell me that Piotr is taking his job that he wasn’t going to fucking do anyway.