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> Right, but I've never met anyone who looks at it this way - this part: "the employer social contributions will be around 40k". Is not your salary. I don't kn

> Right, but I've never met anyone who looks at it this way - this part: "the employer social contributions will be around 40k". Is not your salary. I don't know, maybe you should speak more to people about this. Literally everyone who I discussed it with (like dozens of people) see it in the same way: * There's the money your employer spends to pay your salary * There's the money you take home * Everything in between is the government tax. There's absolutely no difference between "employer social contributions" and "employee social contributions" except in the name Well now I kind of know one person who sees it differently, but this PoV still doesn't make sense to me. > for the simple reason that if the government reduced the employer contribution to zero it wouldn't change anything about your take home salary(unless your employer decided to be generous and give you a raise). Believe it or not, but for multi-national companies job offers in France are smaller for this very reason: you have a fixed budget to hire an employee, you subtract the "employers contributions" and calculate the gross salary you can offer in various countries where you have legal entities. There's also the "adjust to local market part", it's not a single-factor formula of course, but "contributions" play a huge role in it. After all budget is budget, you can go lower if you like but you can't go higher.

gambiting 1y ago
Well obviously, yes, but again, I don't know anyone who looks at it this way. If your salary is £100k and you know your effective tax rate is 35% then you're taking home £65k a year. I don't know how much on top of that my employer is paying in contributions, if it's another £100k on top or zero - and frankly I don't really care? The negotiated salary is £100k/pa and that's what anyone uses as a number of their compensation, if I ask you your salary and you say it's €140k but that's including my employers social contributions......that's just weird? Are jobs advertised this way in France? Edit: I just want to add one more thing - this entire comment chain started by OP saying, and I quote "I have over 50% of my income taken from me into a collapsing welfare state/pension system". The money that the employer pays to have you employed isn't your income, so adding it to your total earnings and saying "well I'm paying 50% of my income to the state" is just not correct. The employer probably pays money for the office and a desk for you to sit at, but it's not your income - it's part of their cost to keep you employed. I will say it again - if those costs dropped down to zero, you wouldn't say your income is now smaller, would you?
- alexey-salmin 1y ago
  No, I'm sorry but this is just pointless, arguing about some technicality like "you can't call that income". That doesn't matter, these are just words. What matters in real life is the size of the cut the government gets from the employee-employer transaction. That cut definitely includes all the "employer contributions". The bigger it is, the less the employee gets. And no, it's not the same as the cost of buying the desk. If would be the same if the state prohibited remote work making a desk a necessity and then forced everyone to buy desks from state-owned providers at the price set by the state. In this case -- yes, absolutely, this becomes a "desk tax" which is eating into your income. UPD Since you insist, I'll address this part too: > I will say it again - if those costs dropped down to zero, you wouldn't say your income is now smaller, would you? I'll go to my boss directly and say that "my income is now smaller than it should be" and ask for increase in gross. If this doesn't work out, I'll go and get an offer elsewhere. Knowing how hiring and budgeting works, this is the only sane course of action. Companies suddenly find them with money they've already budgeted but aren't spending, expect the arms race for professions with high demand. In parallel to that I'll make sure to distribute raises to key members of my team anticipating them doing the same. I'll lose a few less valuable members of the team in the process because they'll receive offers that I won't be willing to counter. In general, I pay more attention to what people do, not what they say. This is why I didn't reply to the question "you wouldn't say your income is now smaller, would you?" the first time -- it's inconsequential, but we can consider it if you like.
  - gambiting 1y ago
    >>That doesn't matter, these are just words. Except it isn't, because you keep doing this to pretend like you're paying 50% of your salary in taxes which just isn't true. No one advertises a job as "pays €60k a year" and then you find out it includes the employer contribution too so actually your salary is more like €40k. If anyone did that you'd call it fraudulent. >>I'll go to my boss directly and say that "my income is now smaller than it should be" and ask for increase in gross ......why? You are paid exactly what you agreed to be paid. If your employer negotiated cheaper electricity deal for the office would you go and ask for a raise too? >>The bigger it is, the less the employee gets Again, why? The company would just pocket the money and not pay you more. I honestly don't see why they would. >>In general, I pay more attention to what people do, not what they say But this is a comments section on hacker news - discussion is the entire point. But look, we just aren't going to agree on this. I just never met anyone in my life who would consider their employer's legal obligations paid directly to the state as part of their salary - if you do that's cool, I have no interest in making you change that view, we're two random strangers on the internet.
selfmodruntime 1y ago
> Believe it or not, but for multi-national companies job offers in France are smaller for this very reason: you have a fixed budget to hire an employee, you subtract the "employers contributions" and calculate the gross salary you can offer in various countries where you have legal entities. This! It's hard for me how some people can't see this.
- gambiting 1y ago
  We can see it, it's obvious that the system in France(and other EU countries) works this way, it's just not really relevant when talking about salary. When I sign an employment contract for 100k euro that's my income. The fact that the employer then has to pay another 40k or 100k or a 1M euro on top of it to keep me employed is not really relevant because it's not my salary - it's their cost to keep me employed. The main proof being in two things 1) like I asked you in another comment - if that contribution was removed, I'm sure you wouldn't feel like you got a paycut. 2) if that did happen, your employer wouldn't magically decide to give that money to you instead, right? It is not and never was your income.

gambiting 1y ago

Well obviously, yes, but again, I don't know anyone who looks at it this way. If your salary is £100k and you know your effective tax rate is 35% then you're taking home £65k a year. I don't know how much on top of that my employer is paying in contributions, if it's another £100k on top or zero - and frankly I don't really care? The negotiated salary is £100k/pa and that's what anyone uses as a number of their compensation, if I ask you your salary and you say it's €140k but that's including my employers social contributions......that's just weird? Are jobs advertised this way in France? Edit: I just want to add one more thing - this entire comment chain started by OP saying, and I quote "I have over 50% of my income taken from me into a collapsing welfare state/pension system". The money that the employer pays to have you employed isn't your income, so adding it to your total earnings and saying "well I'm paying 50% of my income to the state" is just not correct. The employer probably pays money for the office and a desk for you to sit at, but it's not your income - it's part of their cost to keep you employed. I will say it again - if those costs dropped down to zero, you wouldn't say your income is now smaller, would you?

alexey-salmin 1y ago
No, I'm sorry but this is just pointless, arguing about some technicality like "you can't call that income". That doesn't matter, these are just words. What matters in real life is the size of the cut the government gets from the employee-employer transaction. That cut definitely includes all the "employer contributions". The bigger it is, the less the employee gets. And no, it's not the same as the cost of buying the desk. If would be the same if the state prohibited remote work making a desk a necessity and then forced everyone to buy desks from state-owned providers at the price set by the state. In this case -- yes, absolutely, this becomes a "desk tax" which is eating into your income. UPD Since you insist, I'll address this part too: > I will say it again - if those costs dropped down to zero, you wouldn't say your income is now smaller, would you? I'll go to my boss directly and say that "my income is now smaller than it should be" and ask for increase in gross. If this doesn't work out, I'll go and get an offer elsewhere. Knowing how hiring and budgeting works, this is the only sane course of action. Companies suddenly find them with money they've already budgeted but aren't spending, expect the arms race for professions with high demand. In parallel to that I'll make sure to distribute raises to key members of my team anticipating them doing the same. I'll lose a few less valuable members of the team in the process because they'll receive offers that I won't be willing to counter. In general, I pay more attention to what people do, not what they say. This is why I didn't reply to the question "you wouldn't say your income is now smaller, would you?" the first time -- it's inconsequential, but we can consider it if you like.
- gambiting 1y ago
  >>That doesn't matter, these are just words. Except it isn't, because you keep doing this to pretend like you're paying 50% of your salary in taxes which just isn't true. No one advertises a job as "pays €60k a year" and then you find out it includes the employer contribution too so actually your salary is more like €40k. If anyone did that you'd call it fraudulent. >>I'll go to my boss directly and say that "my income is now smaller than it should be" and ask for increase in gross ......why? You are paid exactly what you agreed to be paid. If your employer negotiated cheaper electricity deal for the office would you go and ask for a raise too? >>The bigger it is, the less the employee gets Again, why? The company would just pocket the money and not pay you more. I honestly don't see why they would. >>In general, I pay more attention to what people do, not what they say But this is a comments section on hacker news - discussion is the entire point. But look, we just aren't going to agree on this. I just never met anyone in my life who would consider their employer's legal obligations paid directly to the state as part of their salary - if you do that's cool, I have no interest in making you change that view, we're two random strangers on the internet.

selfmodruntime 1y ago

> Believe it or not, but for multi-national companies job offers in France are smaller for this very reason: you have a fixed budget to hire an employee, you subtract the "employers contributions" and calculate the gross salary you can offer in various countries where you have legal entities. This! It's hard for me how some people can't see this.

gambiting 1y ago
We can see it, it's obvious that the system in France(and other EU countries) works this way, it's just not really relevant when talking about salary. When I sign an employment contract for 100k euro that's my income. The fact that the employer then has to pay another 40k or 100k or a 1M euro on top of it to keep me employed is not really relevant because it's not my salary - it's their cost to keep me employed. The main proof being in two things 1) like I asked you in another comment - if that contribution was removed, I'm sure you wouldn't feel like you got a paycut. 2) if that did happen, your employer wouldn't magically decide to give that money to you instead, right? It is not and never was your income.