Note that France has one of the highest levels of government spending as a share of GDP (and hence represented by taxes, though this includes sales taxes/VATs/e

Note that France has one of the highest levels of government spending as a share of GDP (and hence represented by taxes, though this includes sales taxes/VATs/etc/etc) in Europe, at 62% or so. For comparison, Germany is at 51%, UK at 50%, Netherlands at 47%. Belgium is close to France at about 61%... The US (not in Europe, obviously) is at 46%. And Switzerland at 36%; this is the European outlier in the opposite direction from France. But a priori, just from this data I would expect French taxes to be about 1.4x US taxes and Dutch taxes to be similar to US ones...