Okay, but on the other hand my parent poster made the claim that you'd need a salary of well over 300k to get an above-40% effective tax rate, and I notice that

Okay, but on the other hand my parent poster made the claim that you'd need a salary of well over 300k to get an above-40% effective tax rate, and I notice that you don't seem to have taken issue with him. This feels like an isolated demand for rigor. The person who set off this thread made no claim to be a typical Berlin developer, he just said that he paid 42% taxes, and someone challenged that claim. If everyone's being super careful about using very precise language, fine, but that needs to be everyone being super careful about using very precise language, not just people you disagree with.