Wait until you hear that the marginal income tax rate is about the same BC Canada as it is in California and you don't have a +$500/month health insurance payment to make yourself or through your employer.
The bad deal that american's get for their taxes is really sad.
As a Canadian living and working in the US, I encourage all those that think Canada is somehow better than US, to go give living in Canada (and paying their taxes) a try.
US is a much more competitive and diverse market in every respect (even with it's shortcomings).
My parents (and other immediate family), would move to the US if they could.
My partner and I lived in the US for 10 years, and decided to move back. We're very glad we did.
The US is much more competitive, I'll give you that, but it's not necessarily a good thing. I don't miss it. It's dog-eat-dog, every person for themselves.
I'm not sure how long you've lived in the US, but the first few years we were there were pretty peachy. But the problems just keep piling up.
I don't really have the patience to list everything, but the health care system _alone_ is reason enough to stick around in Canada. It's awesome. The US is a complete disaster. And I say this as someone who benefited from probably the best quality healthcare in the world during my time there.
I get a bit annoyed at which is "best". It really depends on what you're looking for.
The US is great if you want a high-paying career working for world-leading company. Typically you'd make enough so that things like healthcare are an annoyance, not a financial nightmare.
Canada is great if your career is not #1 and you want a government that will provide a comprehensive social safety net.
From what I can find online[1,2], for a dual-income family earning 250k CAD/ 250k USD, tax in BC Canada[1,2] is 33% Federal + 16.80 % State = 49.8%. For California it is 24% Federal + 9.3% State = 33.3%. Is there a big difference in other taxes (like Payroll/Social Security) between California and BC that makes the overall marginal tax same?
Health insurance (USA; upstate New York) costs me $2,300/month in premiums plus $4,000 annually in copays for a family of four. I'd happily take the higher Canadian taxes.
That’s just because you’re in a higher income bracket. If your family of four earned less than ~$50k/year you would pay about 10% that amount for healthcare premiums and have lower deductibles.
The ACA is effectively an extremely large tax on the middle class.
The health insurance offered by American tech companies tend to be very generous. To the point where health care costs are essentially trivial for most employees/families.
Are you sure? I work for a tech company but not a FAANGM and $2,300 plus a $4,000 out of pocket max is about spot on, maybe even slightly less. I’m often told my providers that I have “great” insurance.
Admittedly, I don't have a large sample size of health plans for tech companies.
Anecdotally, my tech-industry employer (disclosed in my profile) offers only one health plan. Always $0 employee contributions for the employee and dependents and no more than $200/month for the employee's partner.
For in-network: $0 deductible, 0% coinsurance, copays are either $30 or $50 for office visits, $250 copay for ER, and standard $15/$40/$75 tiers for drugs. Out of pocket max is $3k for individual / $7.5k for family.
Given the $0 deductible and 0% coinsurance, it would take a very high number of office visits (at least 60 for individuals or 150 for families) to hit the out of pocket cap. For healthy families, it's fairly difficult to spend more than a few hundred dollars on health care (dental/vision plans are similarly generous).
An interesting example the legal documents provide is pregnancy. The stated cost is $12,800 but the expected out of pocket cost is $60.
depends on the company I guess. at $CURRENT_STARTUP we pay pennies per pay period (literally - I'm not really sure why, but roughly 60 cents) for top tier platinum HMO, zero deductible, $4k max out of pocket for copay. $PREVIOUS_STARTUP was the opposite, bottom tier HDHP and they only paid half the premium, $9k deductible.
Top tax bracket in BC is 53.5%. (The "proposed new tax bracket" is happening.)
Sales tax is 12% (5% federal, 7% provincial) on most products; basic groceries and rent are the most significant exemptions. Federal payroll taxes are 10.2% (pension) + 3.8% (unemployment) on the first ~$55k. BC has a 1.95% payroll tax (nominally earmarked for health care) with a small-business exemption.
I feel like you should include the employer portion if you're talking about tax %. If we made you're employer pay all of your tax and quote you the post tax amount as your salary our tax rate wouldn't go to 0.
Can confirm. I'm a healthy 30-something that's married with two kids in Nevada. No state income tax here, but we pay ~$1.6k/mo for what is considered mediocre-to-poor health insurance coverage.
My youngest (2.5 year old) is at the ER with my wife right now getting an x-ray (insurance & the pediatric urgent-cares all referred us to ER, no one else would x-ray <3yr olds) -- I'd guess it'll cost us at least $2-3k, assuming they say it's "not broken". Substantially more if it "is broken". Yay USA.
The bad deal that american's get for their taxes is really sad.