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Which European countries have the best salaries after taxes?
- simianwords 6mo agowhy is switzerland not there but norway and iceland are
- pearlsontheroad 6mo agoSwitzerland is not a member of the European Union.
- xiphias2 6mo agoBecause it wouldn't look good for the EU
- atoav 6mo agoAh yes you choose Switzerland. The country that is famously so affordable to live in. Last time I have been there food has costed literally double than in my home country which is also in the Alps, also has that standard of living, etc. But hey, you moderately save on taxes if you finally manage to settle there, which csn be a bit of a challenge since switzerland isn't the most easy country to get permanent residence in. As a European who has traveled to nearly all European countries and lived in 6 different ones, the idea to only look at the taxrate when chosing your future home country sounds so ridiculously simplistic and money-focused that it could only have come from an American author. The point of having more money is to lead a happy live. In some countries you need more money to do that than in others. And depending on your character, hobbies and goals in life some countries will make it much more expensive than others. For example if you like enjoying a beer in the sun and you start living in Island because of the tax rate, your first winter depression will make you question how smart that really was. Or you will just travel to southern Europe on a regular basis, but then why not live there in the first place.
- MITSardine 6mo agoIf your country is Italy that might be the case, but groceries are at most 30% more expensive than France, and some are nearly the same price (vegetables). Meat and fish do cost an arm and a leg (100% tax on border crossing). Meanwhile, median net salary in CH is 5'000-5'500 per month, double to triple its neighbors. So food is actually very affordable. The food that costs more is the one someone cooked for you, which is logical considering the cook is likely paid more than your engineer (assuming that's your case) salary. But then again, minimum wage Italians are not eating out at the restaurant with any frequency. If you were an engineer in Switzerland instead, you could afford eating out there. The restaurants and terraces are never empty, anyways. Now, if you want to enjoy a beer in the sun, you can get a 2CHF can at the supermarket and go fire up a barbecue at the lake of Zurich, I see people doing that all the time.
- aix1 6mo agoI was wondering the same thing. The data comes from Eurostat, and Eurostat does generally cover Switzerland. There's even a row in the original table[1] but for some reason it's blank. [1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/LC_LCI_LEV__custom_20807131/default/table https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/LC_LCI_LEV__c...
- manucardoen 6mo agoBelgium's not there either, and that's definitely in the EU.
- justonceokay 6mo agoIf you decide to live in Iceland instead of France (for example) for the tax benefits, you get exactly what you deserve
- forinti 6mo agoSurely the climate and the solitude would be too much for someone from the Mediterranean, for example.
- fuck_google 6mo ago[dead]
- justonceokay 6mo ago<deleted>
- dathinab 6mo agoyou posted this twice, probably accidentally in context of some connectivity issues or accidental navigation (at least that way it happened to me before)
- simianwords 6mo agoExactly one delivery semantics don't exist
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- justonceokay 6mo agoThanks
- sam_lowry_ 6mo agoHow coincidental given your nickname /s
- justonceokay 6mo agoWhat I think is funny is how much more traction this duplicate got than the post I didn’t delete :)
- jghn 6mo agoEven from a pure financial perspective, given one benefit of these countries is you generally actually get useful benefits out of your tax dollars unlike the USA, wouldn't a better way of looking at this be some sort of weighted metric? Imagine there's country A where i get a net salary of X and Y units of value out of my tax money. And country B where my net Salary is (X-M) and I get (Y+N) out of my tax money. Depending on the values of M & N, country B could be a clear winner at the end of the day.
- briandear 6mo agoYou could look at disposable income. That’s a more objective measure.
- jghn 6mo agoI think that depends on one's definition of disposable income. I think technically it's more or less what I was calling "net". But many people use it to mean "after I pay my mortgage, and my utilities, and my other thing". The further we go in that second direction the more it captures what I'm getting at. As an example, if I have kids who need daycare and one country provides free daycare and another does not, then we need to account for the cost of daycare in our equation. And that may or may not fall under one's definition of disposable income.
- thfuran 6mo agoThe further you go in that direction, the more you have to include personal circumstances and values and the less useful it is for general comparison. Of course, the whole premise of looking at just average net income is a bit odd, so looking at expected quality of life makes more sense anyways.
- jghn 6mo ago100%. To use my daycare example, if someone didn't have kids, they're not realizing any value out of that. So sure, there's an even more nebulous "value to society" concept, but since TFA is trying to get to dollars and cents I was trying to focus it on overall personal value. But even then one needs to not treat tax dollars equally.
- NalNezumi 6mo agoLooking at salaries after tax is completely meaningless, what is even this article trying to infer. You have to take in to account the cost of living and also quality of services you get for it. France & Sweden is close in the numbers but France is notably cheaper to eat out and Healthcare quality can't even be compared (to French favor). But if you're wealthy you'd probably prefer Sweden still because of the low taxes around wealth. I recently compared (by actually going there) Switzerland vs Sweden when I passed a FAANG tech interview in Zurich, but even with 4-5x Salary of what I have now, I would probably end up living poorer if I had kids (if more than 2, it's for certain) in Zurich. So like, who is this article for.
- keiferski 6mo agoI don’t think it’s completely meaningless if you’re trying to save / invest. A smaller percentage of a larger salary is often more optimal than the reverse. This is why for example working in a high COL city with a high salary is ultimately better; your 10% going to savings will be higher. It might not matter if you never leave the high COL city, but ceteris paribus I’d rather have a larger number in the bank account.
- fauigerzigerk 6mo ago>I don’t think it’s completely meaningless if you’re trying to save / invest It's largely meaningless, because some of what people are saving for in one country can be included in tax and social security contributions in another country - e.g. pensions and university tuition.
- simianwords 6mo agoWhat do you think is more meaningful a metric?
- fauigerzigerk 6mo agoDepends on what it is you really want to know. For macro economic comparisons you would probably want to use some metric that has "disposable income" in its name. And then you'd have to ask what this income includes. Does it include cash transfers? Transfers in kind (e.g. for health and education)? Does it use PPP or market exchange rates? Here's a dataset that Eurostat publishes. It includes cash transfers and transfers in kind, compared using PPP (PPS) exchange rates: Adjusted gross disposable income of households per capita in PPS https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/tec00113/default/table?lang=en https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/tec00113/defa...
- atoav 6mo agoIt does not matter. I'd rather live in a country I like to live in, based on culture, food, society, etc. than earn slightly more. Or phrased differently: what are you going to buy with the extra money that is gonna offset you living in a country you dislike? Choosing a country in Europe is not like choosing a state in the US. The systems, culture, people, food and so on differ much more wildely. Choosing that over a minor tax difference thst could change with the next government is downright unhinged.
- admaiora 6mo agoIsn't this article just plain wrong? These are nowhere near the after tax salaries, an average working Dutch person (even when excluding unemployed) is not grossing 9-10k a month with 6k euros net as this suggests. I think the article is confusing employer-side hourly labour costs with net earnings.
- roelschroeven 6mo agoIf you click the link to Eurostat in the article, you can see the numbers are "Wages and salaries (total)". So yes, that's the cost to the employer, which is much higher than the employees net income.
- lbreakjai 6mo agoThe median salary is around 48k in the Netherlands. That's 4k gross per month, no company is paying 5 to 6k of charges per employee per month.
- roelschroeven 6mo agoI don't know the exact situation in the Netherlands, but if it's anything like in Belgium the employer pays taxes on top of the employee's gross income. The total cost to the employer is therefore significantly higher than what the employee gets, even gross.
- lbreakjai 6mo agoEmployers pay taxes, but this calculator puts it as roughly 14k€ of costs for a 100k€ gross salary for the employee (Compared to 44k€ of costs in Belgium, which is why I left) https://www.deel.com/employee-cost-calculator/ https://www.deel.com/employee-cost-calculator/
- dns_snek 6mo agoI don't know whether this is AI slop or what. The first chart definitely doesn't show average salary AFTER tax, maybe it's a total cost to employer on hourly basis before any taxes or SSC. And the second chart titled "Where do taxes weigh the most on employers and employees?" doesn't actually show what it purports to show. It only shows a small slice of the social security contributions that employers pay. It shows: 100% * (Employer SSC / Total cost to employer), but: Total tax = Tax + Employer SSC + Employee SSC. Total cost to employer = Gross salary + Employer SSC + "benefits/costs" (vary by country) Paid out to employee = Gross salary - Tax - Employee SSC + "benefits/costs" Here's where you can actually find a half-decent comparison: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/taxing-wages-2025_b3a95829-en.html https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/taxing-wages-2025_b3a95... See Table 3.1 on page 71 for a summarized overview of "total tax wedge vs total employer cost" in various living situations (single, with children, low/average/high wage). Note that this still doesn't tell the full story because it ignores some benefits and entitlements that depend on your living situation ("Non-standard tax relief").
- cindyllm 6mo ago[dead]
- Flere-Imsaho 6mo agoNo UK? Last time I checked it was in Europe. I imagine it's right near the bottom...
- lifestyleguru 6mo agoThe salaries in UK are fixed at 25k GBP annually forever in every industry.
- koffiezet 6mo agoNo Belgium either, which I would have expected since tax rates here...
- sam_lowry_ 6mo agoWe were ashamed to send our 2025 stats ;-)
- sam_lowry_ 6mo agoThe article is based on recent Eurostat publications. Eurostat is no longer receiving data from the UK Office of National Statistics. But as sibling comments noted, the whole article is a giant slop, confusing employee costs for employers (this is what the linked Eurostat chart is about) and net salaries.
- teo_zero 6mo agoThe choice of countries seems arbitrary. I thought the list was limited to EU nations, but Iceland and Norway are there. Then I thought it was EFTA countries, but Switzerland is missing. Then noted Belgium is also missing... I give up!
- themgt 6mo agoThe first chart is labeled "Hourly wage after taxes (€)" and links to a specific table in official Eurostat[0]. This Eurostat table is "Labour cost levels by NACE Rev. 2 activity" - afaict Eurostat defines[1] "labour cost" as: core expenditure borne by employers for the purpose of employing staff. They include employee compensation, with wages and salaries in cash and in kind, employers' social security contributions and employment taxes regarded as labour costs minus any subsidies received, but not vocational training costs or other expenditure such as recruitment costs and spending on working clothes In other words, this doesn't whatsoever represent "hourly wage after taxes" and this article is complete slop. [0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/LC_LCI_LEV__custom_20807131/default/table https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/LC_LCI_LEV__c... [1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/metadata/de/lc_lci_lev_esms.htm https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/metadata/de/lc_lci_lev_e...
- sam_lowry_ 6mo agoThis should be the top comment and shame on Euronews for the slop!
- lbreakjai 6mo agoThis article is surprisingly missing Belgium, which I expected to see at the top of the employee costs.
- ginko 6mo agoThe numbers for Norway aren't plausible at all. Full time 45€ after tax would be a yearly net income of 95000 euros. At a ~50% marginal tax rate that's be a yearly income of over 2 million kroner. No way that's the average. According to Statistics Norway the monthly average salary in Norway was 62070kr in 2025, so 744840kr per year. https://www.ssb.no/en/arbeid-og-lonn/lonn-og-arbeidskraftkostnader/statistikk/lonn https://www.ssb.no/en/arbeid-og-lonn/lonn-og-arbeidskraftkos...
- dgrin91 6mo agoThese numbers can get wonky fast. E.g. devs salaries in Ukraine are pegged to the dollar, so they get free raises as the exchange rates plummet. At the same time the cost of living in Ukraine was low before the war and only got lower. Oh and taxes are pretty low in Ukraine. So I'm pretty sure Ukranian devs will end up with one of the top salary rates in all of Ukraine, but the externalities of that are large.
- fragmede 6mo agoI'd call "getting conscripted into joining a fucking war" a rather large externality!
- ponector 6mo ago>> free raises as the exchange rates plummet Also developers use official exchange rate while everything is imported using market rate. 10% cut here. >> the cost of living in Ukraine was low before the war and only got lower This is not true. Some low skilled services are cheap, but high skilled are not. Or are you talking about cost of housing near the frontline? Dev salaries in Ukraine also down since the start of the war as no new projects are outsourced to the country.