Discussion
Which European countries have the best salaries after taxes?
justonceokay: <deleted>
dathinab: you posted this twice, probably accidentally in context of some connectivity issues or accidental navigation (at least that way it happened to me before)
justonceokay: Thanks
NalNezumi: 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 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: 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.
simianwords: why is switzerland not there but norway and iceland are
xiphias2: Because it wouldn't look good for the EU
dns_snek: I 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_b3a95...Note that this still doesn't tell the full story because it ignores any benefits and entitlements that depend on your living situation (married, having children).
Flere-Imsaho: No UK? Last time I checked it was in Europe. I imagine it's right near the bottom...
jghn: 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. Depending on the values of M & N, country B could be a clear winner at the end of the day.
atoav: [delayed]
aix1: I 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__c...
sam_lowry_: How coincidental given your nickname /s
admaiora: 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.
roelschroeven: 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.
koffiezet: No Belgium either, which I would have expected since tax rates here...
sam_lowry_: We were ashamed to send our 2025 stats ;-)
lifestyleguru: What exactly are the tax privileges for rich in Sweden? Because indeed in wealth inequality rankings they are next to Russia and USA.
ACS_Solver: 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.
ACS_Solver: In addition (I'm European), I object to the use of per-hour wages instead of monthly salaries. It's less informative in Europe. Most jobs are full-time, salaries are typically advertised and talked about in monthly terms, and the length of the work week varies as well. Per month is just more useful as a comparison point.Oh and Sweden is slightly ahead of France on the latest EHCI. Sweden scores near the bottom on accessibility (as is tradition, same thing 10 and 15 years ago even) but ranks highly overall and especially on outcomes, so I take issue with the assertion that French healthcare is much better.
lifestyleguru: > EHCII live in a country from the bottom of this ranking and can confirm from personal experience. Nothing works, people die, and still it's very expensive.
flakeoil: 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 is based on the central bank interest rates (a special formula based on that) so it changes each year. In the past 10 years it has been around between 0.5-1% of the total amount you have in this account. Then all the profits you make are tax free as well as no tax on dividends and interest. You can't deduct losses though.In Sweden there is no wealth tax and no inheritance tax.EDIT: And for completeness, if you invest outside of the above mentioned type of account you have to pay 30% on profits and 30% on dividends and interests.
lifestyleguru: Looks like in Sweden it's critical to pick the right parents.
lifestyleguru: 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?
flakeoil: 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.
darekkay: Vacation is also never mentioned in those discussions or comparisons. 10 days in the US vs. 20-30 (+ 8-14 public holidays, depending on the state) in Germany is much more important for _me_ than the net income.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b...
teo_zero: The 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: The 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 clothesIn 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__c...[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/metadata/de/lc_lci_lev_e...
sam_lowry_: This should be the top comment and shame on Euronews for the slop!
briandear: You could look at disposable income. That’s a more objective measure.
jghn: 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 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: 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.
jghn: 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.
kzrdude: 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.
johanneskanybal: 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.
lbreakjai: 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.
fauigerzigerk: >I don’t think it’s completely meaningless if you’re trying to save / investIt'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.
