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Which European countries have the best salaries after taxes?

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Re: Which European countries have the best salaries after taxes?

#51

Post by flakeoil »

lifestyleguru wrote: post #47
flakeoil wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no special privilieges for the rich, as everyone has the same rules. It's actually better for the poorer in a sense as everyone is exempt to pay tax on profits on stock and dividends below a certain amount, 300000 SEK. In Sweden you can invest your money in a special investment account which charges a certain fixed percentage each year on the amount you have in this account (cash and stocks). The percentage…

So a path to wealth for a normal person is being invested in capital markets but only through a "special" account and assuming that real estate rental or purchase will not eat every leftover from highly taxed monthly salary. This "special" account gives access to all major capital markets?

I'm not sure what you are after with you comment, but this account, of which the rules are decided by the authorities, is not that special as every bank and internet trader offers it and it is free and provides low cost Internet trading. And contrary to special pension accounts which exist in many countries, you can take out your money (and add) anytime you want. You just have to pay the tax percentage which is due. So you cannot really add and remove money too often as then you trigger this tax, but once a year is fine.

Re: Which European countries have the best salaries after taxes?

#52

Post by lifestyleguru »

ACS_Solver wrote: post #46
lifestyleguru wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly are the tax privileges for rich in Sweden? Because indeed in wealth inequality rankings they are next to Russia and USA.

We have no wealth tax, no inheritance tax. If most of your income is a salary, the tax burden is high, but if you're living off investments, properties or generational funds, it's quite advantageous.

Sounds like in Sweden it's critical to pick the right parents.

Re: Which European countries have the best salaries after taxes?

#53

Post by flakeoil »

boxed wrote: post #49
flakeoil wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no special privilieges for the rich, as everyone has the same rules. It's actually better for the poorer in a sense as everyone is exempt to pay tax on profits on stock and dividends below a certain amount, 300000 SEK. In Sweden you can invest your money in a special investment account which charges a certain fixed percentage each year on the amount you have in this account (cash and stocks). The percentage…

"everyone has the same rules" and "no special privileges" seems disingenuous to say. In both directions! Progressive tax codes are "the same" for "everyone", but obviously will mean the rich pay more. Now you can argue that's unfair or that it's extremely fair, but it's at least different!

But there is no progressive tax in this account. It is a percentage of what you have in the account. Same percentage for everyone. It's just that starting in 2026 they decided to make it tax free for the first 300000 SEK (about 30000 USD) you have in this account.

Re: Which European countries have the best salaries after taxes?

#54

Post by lbreakjai »

jghn wrote: post #6

Even 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. Depen…

As someone that moved a bit through the EU, that's actually a pretty complex calculation, that's hard to distill into a single number.

My second biggest recurring expense is childcare. Having a child is something you are in control of, so the weight you might give to childcare benefits is something that wildly depends on your life plans.

Same with unemployment benefits. Would you rather a strong safety net and 8% unemployment (Like France), or a weaker net and 4% unemployment, like the Netherlands?

Re: Which European countries have the best salaries after taxes?

#55

Post by MITSardine »

jghn wrote: post #6

Even 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. Depen…

You'd have to break this down into "archetypes" because like 90% of what you pay for is specific: - retirement - healthcare: negligible expense for most young people (for instance, about 80% goes to the 65+ in France) - unemployment (a little more universal, with some large variations still)

Then there's everything to do with children (from direct subsidies to public schools or kindergarten slots), education (not everyone goes to university, for instance), and other subsidies that are income-dependent (two common ones in France are rent subsidy and a salary top-up for low-but-not-too-low incomes).

Plus, ultimately, 100% of what comes in goes out (modulo administrative costs) at the global scale, so you can't just average this or everywhere looks the same.

Re: Which European countries have the best salaries after taxes?

#56

Post by fauigerzigerk »

keiferski wrote: post #22
NalNezumi wrote: post #14

Looking 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 tax…

I 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…

>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.

Re: Which European countries have the best salaries after taxes?

#57

Post by lbreakjai »

roelschroeven wrote: post #36
admaiora wrote: post #19

Isn'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.

If 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.

The 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.

Re: Which European countries have the best salaries after taxes?

#58

Post by johanneskanybal »

lifestyleguru wrote: post #47
flakeoil wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no special privilieges for the rich, as everyone has the same rules. It's actually better for the poorer in a sense as everyone is exempt to pay tax on profits on stock and dividends below a certain amount, 300000 SEK. In Sweden you can invest your money in a special investment account which charges a certain fixed percentage each year on the amount you have in this account (cash and stocks). The percentage…

So a path to wealth for a normal person is being invested in capital markets but only through a "special" account and assuming that real estate rental or purchase will not eat every leftover from highly taxed monthly salary. This "special" account gives access to all major capital markets?

It's pretty universal in the developed world to have some type of long term savings tax-scheme. In us it's 401k/roth. In canada it's tfsa. in uk it's isa. isa/401k/roth has pretty low caps. tfsa and isk has no cap.

But yea, considering I pay close to 50% tax it's remarkable at the same time I can speculate in the market, make 500% and pay 1% tax on it. Or that people with actual money pay so little.

Re: Which European countries have the best salaries after taxes?

#59

Post by kzrdude »

flakeoil wrote: post #44
lifestyleguru wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly are the tax privileges for rich in Sweden? Because indeed in wealth inequality rankings they are next to Russia and USA.

There are no special privilieges for the rich, as everyone has the same rules. It's actually better for the poorer in a sense as everyone is exempt to pay tax on profits on stock and dividends below a certain amount, 300000 SEK. In Sweden you can invest your money in a special investment account which charges a certain fixed percentage each year on the amount you have in this account (cash and stocks). The percentage…

The ISK rules and taxes are relevant for a middle class I think. This was a question about the really rich.. then we need to look at taxes on capital gains, dividends, corporate tax et.c.

Re: Which European countries have the best salaries after taxes?

#60

Post by jghn »

thfuran wrote: post #41
jghn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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…

The 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.

100%. 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.

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