As Jeff points out, filling out the tax form at the end of the year (which is the 1040 form, if you ever run across that in some pop culture reference) involves an absudity of rules. Most of this has to do with how much you get to deduct from your yearly income as living expenses. You can either go with the standard of some amount per person or you can ``itemize'', which means listing all the things that you paid over the year that count towards that. The usually biggest thing that comes up there is interest paid on real estate, so unless you have a mortgage, usually you end up taking the standard deduction. Those that do have a mortgage end up going through all of their receipts for the whole year figuring out what's deductible and what's not. This is where people get in trouble for cheating, mostly.

We have taxes like the ones you list under duty, as well, but they're not as significant as the ones you pay (at least on auto fuel), so you don't really think about them. But fuels, tobacco, and alcohol all have taxes applied, even if they're mostly hidden within the price you pay (except for gas, which always has that nine-tenths of a cent per gallon tacked on, which is part of the tax).