[sva_]

The incentives are stacked up really weird here. There are a lot of situations in which earning more money just means paying more tax and getting less social benefits, so your income stays about the same.

I'm personally leaving next year. But there are many other reasons.

[csunbird]

Why was this downvoted? The current system of providing benefits to “poor” in Germany absolutely kills any incentive to earn more than 3k gross income per month.

Anyone earning more than that actually starts to earn less, as the benefits immediately go away (e.g. rent support) and leaving you with less money on the table.

A family of 4 (2 unemployed adults and 2 kids) qualify for 2k to 3k Eur (net) benefits per month, meanwhile any “working” adult get slapped with 51% effective tax rate without any benefits at all. Basically you share your income with another family just because they do not feel like working.

[majewsky]

> meanwhile any “working” adult get slapped with 51% effective tax rate without any benefits at all

This number is demonstrably false. I just checked my payslip from last month. Gross salary is around 7000 euros, and net salary is around 4300 euros, giving an effective tax rate of 39%. And that's only if you consider health insurance, care insurance, unemployment insurance, and the statutory pension plan "taxes". I don't mean to enter into a debate into what constitutes a tax, but in many other countries, these types of insurances are handled privately, so the tax rate will "look different" without meaningfully describing the difference in actual expendable income. Effective tax rate on my payslip just for taxes that are called "tax" is around 20%.

If you are counting statutory insurances into your understanding of tax rate, then the part of "without any benefits at all" is just ludicrous hyperbole, or we have a very different understanding of the word "benefit".