As a European, I wonder what you're referring to. My aggregate total tax, including VAT (I'm in the UK, so the VAT rate is 20% for standard rated goods, but like in your case there's lots of zero rated goods; I believe the top VAT rate in the EU is 25%) is ~36% on a salary that puts me well into the "1%".
(VAT accounts for "only" about 4 percentage points of that, as the amount of my post-income-tax income that goes towards non-zero-rated products is not all that high).
Marginal tax rates in many European countries can be around or exceeding 50%, but you'd have to be ludicrously wealthy with a useless accountant to actually pay anywhere near that, even including VAT, unless you spend all your money on drinking and driving.
As a European, I wonder what you're referring to. My aggregate total tax, including VAT (I'm in the UK, so the VAT rate is 20% for standard rated goods, but like in your case there's lots of zero rated goods; I believe the top VAT rate in the EU is 25%) is ~36% on a salary that puts me well into the "1%".
(VAT accounts for "only" about 4 percentage points of that, as the amount of my post-income-tax income that goes towards non-zero-rated products is not all that high).
Marginal tax rates in many European countries can be around or exceeding 50%, but you'd have to be ludicrously wealthy with a useless accountant to actually pay anywhere near that, even including VAT, unless you spend all your money on drinking and driving.