6 ms·

A bit of a detraction from the link but can anyone who's lived for a significant amount of time in both the UK and the US confirm that £100k is equivalent to $2

• eckesicle 4y ago
  I worked at Coinbase making 140k GBP in base compensation. My SF based colleagues with the same job title were making 250k USD (so 202k GBP). We sat down one day and compared our household budgets line by line and in the end we estimated that 'money left over' for equivalent house, medical and kids education my American colleagues were slightly better off, but maybe only by 5-10k USD per year. Anecdatally ...
  • BoorishBears 4y ago
    The fact that people living in SF managed to be ahead by anything proves there's a massive delta, especially since you're wording this in past-tense (SF has gotten cheaper depending on the timeline you consider)
  • shawabawa3 4y ago
    Bare in mind at the time coinbase also paid above market rate in London (London rates were cut for new hires shortly after IIRC) (I also worked at CB London)
  • NullPrefix 4y ago
    How much of the budget was mortgage? Because with mortgage you can sell the expensive house afterwards.
    • hhmc 4y ago
      Not the part of the mortgage that's accumulated interest -- which is going to be considerable at current rates.
  • nivenkos 4y ago
    140k is an incredible salary in the UK though, like top 0.1% at least. It's also hard to compare things 1:1 - since the NHS is "free" (via taxation), but it doesn't cover dentistry at all really whereas equivalent good US health insurances will do.
    • lozenge 4y ago
      You're off but not by much, 1% earn over 183k, 2% earn over 128k and 3% earn over 104k meaning they were in the top 2% of income earners. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-from-1-to-99-for-total-income-before-and-after-tax https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-f...
      • dan-robertson 4y ago
        Also top deciles are concentrated in London / the south east so a lower %ile when you restrict to London
    • airpoint 4y ago
      Incredible salary in the UK != incredible salary in London
      • hhmc 4y ago
        You are gated from almost nothing in London on £140K -- the only meaningful exception would be buying a house in a central location
• midasuni 4y ago
  100k in the U.K. assuming no student loans to repay would be £66,777 net. Most things I purchase have no tax - food, housing, train fares. The oil for this winter heating cost £1500 plus £75 vat.
  • JonChesterfield 4y ago
    Food, housing and train fares are all taxed?
• onion2k 4y ago
  £100k in the UK a top 10% wage for the country, but the wages in the UK are massively skewed towards London and the South East. As for the tax, we have progressive taxation in the UK. Earning £100k, you'd pay 0% on the first 12.5k, 25% on the next 70k or so, and 45% on the last 27.5k (numbers are from memory so they might be a little off). High wage earners are not giving up half their income in tax. That'd be silly.
  • vidarh 4y ago
    Including NI it's more like 32% and 42%, and the 40% + 2% NI kicks in lower than that. But, yeah, the effective rate is far lower. You hit 33% income tax + NI at 100k (see listentotaxman.com)
  • jstx1 4y ago
    Your numbers are way off. It's: Basic rate of 20% on earnings between £12,571 and £50,270. Higher Rate of 40% on earnings between £50,271 and £125,139. Additional Rate of 45% on earnings from £125,140. (this is from the tax year starting next week, it used to be £150k instead of £125k) You also gradually lose your tax-free allowance if you make over £100k so there's a weird dead zone in which your marginal rate is something like 60%. Then there's NI which is effectively tax too but isn't listed in the bands above. Someone on £150k is paying 40% tax and NI (total, not marginal). Not quite half but it's not low either. (You could get to more than 50% deductions if you factor in student loans)
    • LandR 4y ago
      Are for those of us in Scotland, that 40% is 41% :/
      • teh_klev 4y ago
        Yes and kicks in at just over 43k :(
    • Jochim 4y ago
      The problem is most people simply aren't rich enough. The effective tax rate of our current, and richest, prime minister was only 22%. I'm on the low end of the higher rate bracket and already pay more than that, before counting NI/loans.
• vidarh 4y ago
  I earn well above that and my effective tax rate is well below 50%. The top marginal rate is 47% except for a narrow band due to phase out of personal allowance, but my effective rate is lower. With respect to VAT, it nudges my total tax paid up about 4 percentage points. Total, including VAT, NI, and council tax is still well below 50%. Remember, you're not going to spend nearly all of your pre tax earnings on VAT rated goods and services, given you pay tax and housing andany other things which does not incur VAT.
  • dan-robertson 4y ago
    It’s worth considering employer payroll taxes which might be different (though my memory from looking it up a while ago was that the payroll taxes weren’t so different). It’s also possible to have another effective 9% marginal tax from student ‘loans’ though that will go away after a while.
    • vidarh 4y ago
      It's not normal to count payroll taxes as part of the employers tax, as that would also increase the gross salary above that which the employee considers their salary to be. E.g. nobody factors that in when comparing California salaries to the many US states with no payroll tax. Even so, you need to get up towards 300k GBP/year to exceed 50% even with the payroll tax. And that assumes you're making zero pension contributions (as contributions are offset against your tax up to 40k gross/year) With respect to student loans, sure, you can add that in but then you need to do that when comparing to the US salary levels in this thread too.
      • dan-robertson 4y ago
        Payroll taxes matter to some extent when comparing employment in different tax regimes because they determine (some of) the total cost to the employer. They can also matter for contracting arrangements. Though the local job market probably matters more.
        • 4y ago
• dan-robertson 4y ago
  I think it’s a bit hard to make direct comparisons because the US is more varied in things like tax policy or having multiple important cities. For a while, the strong pound made it seem like people in the U.K. were well paid compared to most developed countries (not the US which tends to have higher pay than basically any other medium or large country) but I think this was mostly just the strong pound and purchasing power wasn’t much higher in the U.K. The pound has fallen a lot in the last decade and I think various numbers like pay have been somewhat sticky and not really gone up to match the increased cost of imports. To attempt to make a comparison, if you live in central London vs Manhattan, tax rates will be comparable (maybe more so if you double both gross salaries), rents in Manhattan will be something like 2x (probably more) based on apartment type but you’ll potentially get something bigger/nicer in NY (ie partly it is about a difference in the average unit, but if all you can get is a large apartment, you have to pay for all of it so controlling for such qualities isn’t so relevant). Rent controls mean that the supply of apartments is less than might be expected based on the number of housing units In Manhattan. Groceries (in Manhattan) are more expensive, as are things like restaurants. The comparison doesn’t feel totally crazy to me. Other US cities may be different though, eg I don’t know how the taxes/rent would work out in SF or the Bay Area or Seattle or Chicago. There isn’t really much of an alternative to London in the U.K. in the same way that there are many ‘top’ cities in the US and tax policy is much more uniform between locations.
• raverbashing 4y ago
  People assume wrongly but not everything has 20% VAT in the UK/EU and in the US not everything has the sticker price on it (think tips + sales tax + a lot of BS fees or friction as well around) so calculations have to consider those