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What this tool does — and deliberately doesn't

It answers one precise 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 isolates the thing that's genuinely hard to research — how differently two countries treat the same money — from the things you can research easily, like whether your profession pays more in Munich than Manchester.

It deliberately doesn't guess your new salary (job markets price the same role very differently), doesn't adjust for cost of living (a Zurich franc buys less than a Warsaw zloty), and doesn't model expat regimes like the Dutch 30% ruling or Spain's Beckham law — several of which can flip a comparison on their own. Treat the result as the tax half of your decision, not the whole of it.

Reading the result like someone who's done it

Three patterns come up constantly. Countries with visible, heavy payroll deductions (Germany, Belgium, Austria) usually bundle health insurance into them — while "cheap" payroll countries like the US and Switzerland bill you separately for cover that Europeans never see itemised. Second: several systems are gentle in the middle and steep at the top (Ireland especially), so the verdict can flip as your salary grows. Third: where your pay arrives in 13 or 14 instalments (Austria, Spain, parts of Italy), monthly figures are averages — 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 twenty pairs — or jump straight to any of the 22 national calculators.