I can only spend so much time looking into the tax system for Sweden but I found nothing that describes the system of a zero rate of federal income tax. Can you please link me to a citation that describes the current system of taxation.
So if I understand you correctly, Swedes pay nothing but get a lot from government? Or do they pay a lot to get a lot but it is not income tax as we know it? Or, is the nation so small that they get to live off of the capital gains from Nobel, perhaps? Or, do they really pay a lot but it is so progressive (communistic) that it only seems that nobody really pays?
I can only spend so much time looking into the tax system for Sweden but I found nothing that describes the system of a zero rate of federal income tax. Can you please link me to a citation that describes the current system of taxation. So if I understand you correctly, Swedes pay nothing but get a lot from government? Or do they pay a lot to get a lot but it is not income tax as we know it? Swedes pay a lot of taxes, it happens that their FEDERAL tax is zero because they do not have FEDERAL government.
The Swedish example shows that picking one type of tax can lead to absurdity. You need to add ALL government taxes all together, whether federal, state, local, whether of on wages, profit, dividends, property, sales, inheritance, services, sales etc ... Then you can reason honestly about it.
BTW, the best way is to add all budgets of all governments and compare them with GDP. (when the budget is larger than taxes it tax the future of out children, when it is smaller it is an investment). I did it once a few years ago and I found that Sweden has total tax as a percentage of GDP a little smaller than US (both were above 50%).