What's wrong with VPN + Tor combination?
There are two scenarios. You either route everything from Tor, and send the final message to the VPN, or you use your VPN as first-end proxy, and send the message to Tor afterwards. In the former scenario, your VPN knows the final message, and can de-anonymize you to some extent, and in the latter, everything you're supposed to hide from your Internet provider is firstly sent to your VPN provider. So in both cases, you have less anonymity than just using Tor.
But if I use just Tor, then my ISP knows that I'm using Tor, which can be a much more problematic case, depends on where you live. If I use VPN + Tor, then the information of me using a Tor is forwarded from ISP to VPN, i.e. now VPN knows it instead of ISP.
I don't say that Tor alone is not safe, no, actually, You + Tor is the safest option but what I'm saying is that I'm afraid the fact that you use Tor, for the government, automatically means that you are doing something wrong and are already in their watchlist. That's why I would move towards VPN + Tor combo, definitely if everything is done correctly. But still it's a trust business.