I’m considering looking at jobs in Europe but most listings seem to pay about half of what I make in the US before tax. I’m wondering if this is perhaps because they are listing the net salary after taxes. When you see a job posted for e.g. EUR 80,000, does that mean that I’ll have to pay taxes on that amount? Do employers pay some of your taxes like they do in the US (payroll tax)?
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In my country (Italy) if you see a job with 80.000€ of salary, is without taxes. You’ll pay taxes before receiving the salary (automatically, you don’t have to do anything).
You have different taxation in base of your salary, and it’s not really easy to understand your net salary.
for example, if you earn 80.000€/year, you have to consider a lot of taxations.
From 0 to 15.000€ you pay 23% of taxes, so 3450€
From 15.000€ to 28.000€, 27% goes on taxes, so 3510€
And so on until 75.000€.
If you earn 80.000€/year you have to sum ALL these values 3450+3510+…..
So from 80.000€ you arrive to 52.430€ (if my calculations are right).
This is only one tax, called “Irpef”
Than you have regionals taxes, pension fund taxes, municipal taxes (that are a lot lighter than IRPEF, and depends on the region where you live).
So, basically, using a calculator online, if you live for instance in Rome you’ll get, starting from 80.000€, 45.749 € of net income.
It could be a little bit higher if you have a dependent spouse, children, people with handicap in your family, etc..
BTW you have to consider that you have free health (even very very expensive surgery or invalidant health problems, like cancer, diabetes, and so on) , free education (also universities are cheap and if you’re poor are substantially free, with free accommodation and free food), if you get fired you can obtain NASPI (unemployment allowance), and so on.
In Denmark the salary posted is before tax, since you pay X% (usually 37%) in taxes, however it depends on how much you make (bigger pay = more % taxes).
Every year we will report how much we estimate on making the forthcoming year, and then the percentage of taxes will be subtracted from the salary monthly by our employer.
Salaries in the US are generally higher. The cost of living is also generally higher. In Europe the same principle applies in general. In Czechia the cost of living is lower than in Norway, as well as the wages.
That said, almost every salary posted here is pre-tax, or bruto as it is known in Dutch. The after tax would be called netto.