How can a country such as Ireland have lower taxes than the United States, but still provide free education?

Question

..and other public services.
I'm not trying to start an argument about whether the US or Europe, or countries in Europe are better, but it's just I asked a question previously about Americans paying huge college fees. One of the replys stated that taxes in Europe are much higher so you still pay for it, even if not directly. Fair point. Taxes in most European countries are pretty high. But, taxes in Ireland, both personal and corporation are lower than in the U.S...
I guess my question is more complex than originally stated..and I'm not even sure what it is....

Answer 1

They don't buy the $1400.00 toilet seats and $1100.00 stanley claw hammers that our government does

Answer 2

There could be several explanations. The US does spend a lot of money on wellfare programs (just not as much as European ones do on average). Ireland could provide free college education but be less generous somewhere else.

Also tax codes can be extremely complicated--the Irish government may take in a lot of revenue from some other form of taxation (perhaps a Value Added Tax isn't included under personal or corporate taxes).

Finally the US does spend a lot of money on defense; I'm guessing the Irish military is proportionately smaller.

Answer 3

well to start the United States has a significantly larger popualtion to support- secondly we issue more support to foreign nations than a country such as Ireland. I have heard the argument before as well from foreign friends and have grown upset at the United States lack of what I would say is 'wise spending', but we have different societies and cultures. We have the largest and most powerful army in the world- that takes a lot of money to sustain, we are one of the strongest competitors in the global market which costs the government alot of money. Not to say that our priorities are drastically different from a nation such as Ireland's, but our budget is very different from theirs based on our history and how we as a nation forsee the future. I do believe more money should be attributed to reducing the cost of education since colleges nowadays are run more as corporations than educational institutions.

Answer 4

Whilst Irish income tax rates may be lower than in the US -- and I have not verified that -- tax in Ireland as a whole is higher than in the US. VAT rates are more than double the US sales taxes and the tax on petrol is higher by a factor of 10 at least, just for starters.

Answer 5

The largest items, in order, of federal government spending are:

1. Defense
2. Social Security
3. Medicare

So, we could lower our taxes (and we should) by cutting big government spending. We could especially cut wasteful spending so there was more left over to spend on education.

Answer 6

Maybe because Ireland doesnt have the greedy politicians that we do, with thousands of greedy hands in that big cookie jar of tax money. Also, look up what we have spend on our little Iraq adventure.

Answer 7

my guess would be that ireland has better leadership managing how their tax dollars are spent much less pork barrel spending and wastefullness they probably dont spend 100s of billions a year helping the poor of other nations and freeing countries that dont want to be freed while neglecting the needs of its own citizens they spend their money at home instead of all over the world and unlike our govt education is priority to them our govt has grants in place to help fund higher education but they are nearly impossible for the average citizen to find

Answer 8

Because wealthy people love their $$$DOLLABILLS$$$