Lessons from my first exit

I'm not sure I follow what you're saying. People who work at Google should pay more/less tax? Or that people who start companies should get more tax breaks (or pay more?)

I'm European so I don't really click with the obsession some places have with avoiding tax, so you may have to explain it like I'm 5 :-)

Lol, Europe is the home and crown palace of tax evasion, look to the Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Andorra, Gibraltar, Isle of Man, Jersey...

I think a big part of the difference in tax acceptance between the USA and Europe might be that European populations per country tend to be a lot more homogenous.

In the USA I think you get a lot of resentment over people paying for populations who they don’t feel they themselves are part of. Whereas in Europe it’s more plausibly a “there but for the grace of god go I” situation, where the person using some form of government assistance may plausibly be your second cousin.

Of course no one talks about this directly because it’s wrong think. I suspect this is also why a lot more right wing people are anti tax and left wing people are tax accepting. On the left you have less of the in group out group sentiment, for whatever reason.

In Europe most average people are happy to pay tax, despite there being a number of tax havens as you point out. I'd say most people have a low opinion of them. Versus the USA particularly, where it seems many people dislike paying tax.

I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't know a single person happy with the tax rate or the general performance/effectiveness of government spending. Practically every single restaurant, bar or other kinds of brick-and-mortar shops is evading VAT and income tax, it's so normal that when I was buying winter tires this morning, they straight up asked me whether I need a receipt or want to skip the VAT over phone. Every single aspiring entrepreneur I talk to asks me how to incorporate in one of the tax havens and otherwise lessen the tax and bureaucratic load. My city is full of immigrants from western EU countries who wanted to pay less tax.

You're not in Western Europe, which is where more people tend to be happier to pay tax (particularly the Northwest/Protestant areas), because they believe they'll get the benefit from paying the taxes.

OTOH, look at places like Italy where there's more evasion, because people don't feel that they get anything back.

Even when I visit the west and tell people I pay 10% income tax with healthcare and social insurance included, they immediately ask me how hard is it to move.

Especially funny with Germans who still believe they are richer than the eastern part of Europe, but a SWE working for the same US company from here makes 10-20% more due to lower tax. The faces they make when they finish the mental calculations are incredible.

Yeah, that's fair. I can totally see why people without family commitments et al would move.

I'm not massively happy about the amount of tax I pay, but I do like living in a relatively prosperous society without too much suffering, so it's fine I suppose.

The thing is, I don't see a relatively prosperous society without too much suffering when I am visiting the west or north of Europe... At least not more than the east, and definitely not enough to justify the tax hike.

Generally, the east of EU is much safer and while it's poorer and that is its own kind of suffering, there's nothing like the bombings, muggings, general dirtiness everywhere, etc. I feel perfectly safe any time during day and night in Warsaw, Poznan, Prague, Brno, Bratislava, Ljubljana... Definitely not in Paris, Berlin, Brussels and so on.