[aserafini]

I’ve never seen European salaries quoted post tax. In which countries is this true?

[fastbeef]

Not income tax, payroll tax, the tax the employer pays for having employees. Most people are not even aware of this existing. It the one marked “Employer” in this table:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payroll_tax

[beberlei]

Its not a tax in Europe, but usually the companies share of social insurance. That is why the word payroll tax is confusing to us Europeans :-)

In Germany the company share of social insurance is another ~20% on top of the employees pre-tax salary.

It is not nearly enough to explain the wage disparity between SF/US and European salaries.

[fastbeef]

Exactly. 20% ON TOP of your salary. It’s baked in to the US salary. Sure, it doesn’t account for the whole delta but it’s not nothing.

[foldr]

It's fairly cold comfort to know that your employer is paying some taxes associated with your position that don't come out of your notional pre-tax salary.

What most people are interested in is how much of their pay is take-home pay. In the US, the take-home fraction of your pay will typically be somewhat higher. It's certainly not the case that software engineers in the US are getting bigger notional salaries but then paying a larger fraction in paycheck deductions than their European counterparts.

[egman_ekki]

So e.g. in Denmark, Employer pays no tax for an employee, but still the salaries are nowhere near US.

[C1sc0cat]

Erm not sure what your talking about those us salaries don't have the employer side taxes either.

[toyg]

Afaik, in Italy, Spain, France and Netherlands, the convention is largely to talk about salaries post-tax. In UK it’s pre-tax.

[alexgmcm]

I live in Spain and have only ever seen pre-tax numbers discussed. Certainly in professional jobs.

By tax, I mean income tax. I've only ever seen "salario bruto" in my contracts, in job adverts etc.

[arcturus17]

I'm Spanish and can corroborate this. Maybe sometimes with friends and family you'll talk about neto but otherwise everywhere else it's bruto.

[aserafini]

TIL. Germany is also always pre-tax.