The first thing that came to mind was "All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health an

The first thing that came to mind was "All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?" But yeah, all the things you mention. I think it's conservative but not unreasonable to use as a rule of thumb that your net take home is about half of what a 'naive' calculation would net you. Especially in the beginning where you need to reserve a certain part of your revenues as a buffer for economic downturns; 6 months at the least, better a year. Back in May/April, it was the contractors that got the boot first. From what I can tell in IT they've mostly rebounded, but in previous crises that didn't happen so soon. And you can either choose to work with a middle man, who will take a sizeable cut of your revenue, or do your own customer development, which takes a lot of time. Yes there are people who work for the same customer months on end for many years, but a) that's dodgy from a tax perspective, and b) in those cases you generally don't get to charge e1000/day. All I'm saying is - grass is always greener on the other side. Yes as a contractor/consultant you'll make (a lot) more as a programmer in Europe, but not as much as the proverbial e1000/day rate makes it out to be.