Here's someone else's follow-up to that article:

http://taxfoundation.org/blog/show/26292.html

The original article most definitely said the figures included property taxes. Which apparently now they don't. Also not included is "payroll tax" - now is that an employer's contribution or the amounts deducted from each of your salary payments?

If the latter, that makes the stats completely meaningless. The 9.2% would be some figure of taxes due at tax time that you hadn't already paid during the year. Regardless, the figures seem to be totally out to lunch and I have yet to see any evidence backing up the claims.

The only way I've been able to make them jive is to take the tax amount of some low-paid job and factor them as a percentage of someone else with a much higher salary. Creative, but completely meaningless.

While I was working for the man, my take-home pay was probably no more than 60-65% of what my salary was. The rest accounted for federal and provincial taxes as well as Canada Pension Plan (old age security) and EI (Employment Insurance, formerly called UI, Unemployment Insurance).

I've generally heard of people in many US states paying less income tax, but I was under the impression this was still upwards of 30% for a decent middle-class salary (inclusive of OAS and any unemployment benefit payments).