More revenue without more taxes?

If the United States was a “socialist” government, we would pay more taxes.  Currently, 27% of our country’s total income is collected by the government.  That sounds high, but it is actually very low for a developed nation; Sweden’s government, in contrast, collects 51% of national income.

But all one hears are people shrilling about all the income they lose to taxes.  I think this happens because a lot of people do surrender close to 50% of their income, so it’s hard to understand the aggregate low level of taxation in our country.  In short, we have a moderately high level of taxation for those who pay taxes.  A problem, however, is that we have a very narrow tax base.  Some individuals, especially those with enough money or knowledge, benefit from a cornucopia of exemptions, and poor people pay almost no taxes.  (The bottom 40% of wage earners pay .3% of all federal income tax and 5% including payroll taxes.)  Corporations ostensibly pay a high tax rate, but a plenitude of exemptions again lowers the effective tax rate to below OECD levels.

For a lot of people, it feels like they pay too much to the government.  On the aggregate, however, the United States has a narrow tax base.  Widening our tax base would enable a lot of the reforms progressives desire (universal health care, national infrastructure bank, increased federal support to students, &c) without increasing nominal tax rates.