American and British tax systems

I work in tax area and I'm interested in learning foreign tax systems. So I've recently begun to read about different countries and their tax laws.

For more English practice I've decided to write short conclusions about one or another tax.

So this one is about income tax in the UK, the USA and Russia.

The United Kingdom and the USA have Anglo-Saxon law systems. And their tax systems are directed to social justice. But American tax system is more complicated than British one. Because in the USA taxes are collected in four levels: federal, state and local. But local level has its own system of tax charging. Taxes on the local level can be levied in different ways: on municipal level, county or district level. And in the UK there’re only two levels: federal and local.

Income taxes in the UK and the USA have similar and at the same time different features. Both systems have progressive taxation scale, significant non-taxable minimums and social deductions.

In 2010 the Financial times published an article where it compared effective tax rates in different countries. So in the UK the effective tax rate is bigger than in the USA: 31.5% against 24.3%.

For comparison: in Russia the effective tax rate is 13%. But we don’t have so much non-taxable minimums and our social deductions are very small.