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You'll actually find it's pretty complicated to measure earnings in Europe. In London you could happily be earning $200,000 - $300,000 with IT skills, avoid ta

You'll actually find it's pretty complicated to measure earnings in Europe. In London you could happily be earning $200,000 - $300,000 with IT skills, avoid tax, keep 90% of that, and have the state benefits. Simply stated, because of the high levels of tax and rife avoidance, it's probably quite difficult to quantify earnings in London, for example.

DanBC 12y ago
> In London you could happily be earning $200,000 - $300,000 with IT skills, avoid tax, keep 90% of that, and have the state benefits. How? Which particular state benefits are you talking about? (And it seems like you're talking about evasion - which is illegal, rather than avoidance which is a mix of normal tax planning (a contractor registering for VAT and claiming some of that back) and loophole-manipulation).
- ownagefool 12y ago
  Contract for GOV.UK or finance, high end will see you those rates with 2 weeks holiday + the 8 bank holidays. Look for the word devops for example. Health care is the obvious one. University has kinda jumped the shark though. Trust schemes or defer forever, depending on your attitude to risk. I'm not saying said schemes should be used, just that it's popular and skews what people really earn.
  - eru 12y ago
    How do you avoid the taxes, though? And why would you put up with only 2 weeks holiday anywhere in Europe? I'm not sure that's even legal.
    - ownagefool 12y ago
      You can opt out of the work hours regulations, but even if you don't as a contractor you will be running your own Ltd, so unless you're liable to sue yourself, you'll be fine with 2 weeks holiday which is comparable to the US. Of course you can take more, but as a contractor you get paid per day, so it'll affect your earnings. Avoiding tax once you're not PAYE is pretty easy, there are loads of loopholes but the government sanctioned method is to take £40k per year at under 20% and leave the rest in the company. If you have a non-working spouce, this becomes £80000. You can also contrib, I believe, £40k to a pension, double again for your spouce and set yourself up for a super early retirement. If you're open to more risk, there are loan based trust systems that'll get you access to your money a lot quicker. They're currently totally legal but the government does make a lot of noise about shutting them down. Point being, earnings aren't reflective of wealth in the UK and you can do well here too as sadly, the well off have a lot more opportunities to legally avoid tax.
      - eru 12y ago
        Interesting. I guess that's why they need a nominally much higher tax take than eg Singapore, where everyone pays.

DanBC 12y ago

> In London you could happily be earning $200,000 - $300,000 with IT skills, avoid tax, keep 90% of that, and have the state benefits. How? Which particular state benefits are you talking about? (And it seems like you're talking about evasion - which is illegal, rather than avoidance which is a mix of normal tax planning (a contractor registering for VAT and claiming some of that back) and loophole-manipulation).

ownagefool 12y ago
Contract for GOV.UK or finance, high end will see you those rates with 2 weeks holiday + the 8 bank holidays. Look for the word devops for example. Health care is the obvious one. University has kinda jumped the shark though. Trust schemes or defer forever, depending on your attitude to risk. I'm not saying said schemes should be used, just that it's popular and skews what people really earn.
- eru 12y ago
  How do you avoid the taxes, though? And why would you put up with only 2 weeks holiday anywhere in Europe? I'm not sure that's even legal.
  - ownagefool 12y ago
    You can opt out of the work hours regulations, but even if you don't as a contractor you will be running your own Ltd, so unless you're liable to sue yourself, you'll be fine with 2 weeks holiday which is comparable to the US. Of course you can take more, but as a contractor you get paid per day, so it'll affect your earnings. Avoiding tax once you're not PAYE is pretty easy, there are loads of loopholes but the government sanctioned method is to take £40k per year at under 20% and leave the rest in the company. If you have a non-working spouce, this becomes £80000. You can also contrib, I believe, £40k to a pension, double again for your spouce and set yourself up for a super early retirement. If you're open to more risk, there are loan based trust systems that'll get you access to your money a lot quicker. They're currently totally legal but the government does make a lot of noise about shutting them down. Point being, earnings aren't reflective of wealth in the UK and you can do well here too as sadly, the well off have a lot more opportunities to legally avoid tax.
    - eru 12y ago
      Interesting. I guess that's why they need a nominally much higher tax take than eg Singapore, where everyone pays.