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What this tool does, and what it leaves out on purpose

It answers one narrow question: if my current salary were converted at today's exchange rate and paid in the destination country, what would its tax system leave me? That pins down the part that is genuinely hard to look up, how differently two countries treat the same money, and sets aside the parts you can research easily, like whether your role pays more in Munich than in Manchester.

On purpose, it does not try to guess your new salary (job markets price the same role very differently), does not adjust for cost of living (a Zurich franc buys less than a Warsaw zloty), and does not model expat regimes such as the Dutch 30% ruling or Spain's Beckham law, any of which can flip a comparison on its own. Read the result as the tax half of the decision, not the whole thing.

How to read the result like someone who has done it

A few patterns show up again and again. Countries with big, visible payroll deductions (Germany, Belgium, Austria) usually fold health insurance into them, whereas lighter-payroll places like the US and Switzerland bill you separately for cover that Europeans rarely see itemised. Next, some systems are gentle in the middle and steep at the top (Ireland especially), so the verdict can flip as your pay grows. And where salary arrives in 13 or 14 instalments (Austria, Spain, parts of Italy), the monthly figure is an average, so the annual total is the honest comparison, which is what we show.

For the deeper country-by-country stories, our head-to-head comparisons cover fourteen pairs, or you can jump straight to any of the 22 national calculators.