[jobegrabber]

>Income tax + business tax pile up to 50% already

Is that for all your income or "just" over a certain threshold?

>Even if you make some good money, that does not leave you with a lot to live.

You said you travelled to different countries in Europe, Africa and Asia. Do you consider that not leaving you with a lot to live?

>with virtually no deductible costs you pay taxes first, and then have to take care about health care, insurances and pension afterwards

Those are all, up to a certain degree, deductible from your taxes, right?

[bartminton]

>Is that for all your income or "just" over a certain threshold?

Regarding income tax, there is a tax free allowance of 9.984.

>You said you travelled to different countries in Europe, Africa and Asia. Do you consider that not leaving you with a lot to live?

We travel for more than 15 years and we mostly leverage so called PEP offers, which reduce your travel cost to a fraction of the real cost. Otherwise we'd not be able to afford that.

>Those are all, up to a certain degree, deductible from your taxes, right?

That's the point. They are NOT! The only deductible position would be an official pension insurance. If you invest on your own (which we do) you can not deduct a dime. Everything else we have to pay AFTER taxation.

[jobegrabber]

Sound's like it's quite a lot to live on if you have enough cash on hand to travel only "mostly" on PEP.

>That's the point. They are NOT!

Your private pension might not be - but with Health Care, business expenses and certain type of insurances there's more than "virtually no deductible costs" though.

There's a lot of stuff that seems unfair, I agree. I'm not here to debate that you pay more into the system as others and don't get more benefits from it - but the picture you're painting of a 70 % overall tax rate and "not a lot to live on" strikes me as a bit too grim.