For many of the sibling comments discussing before/after tax: part of the confusion arises here because many European countries essentially have two steps of taxation. I work for an American organization as a Dutch person and have had to figure some of this out for my own contract situation.

For the Netherlands, your contract will state a wage "before taxes". But the employer will play "employer's taxes" over this wage, making you effectively ~20% more expensive. What gets transferred to your bank account is wage "after taxes", but this is after income taxes.

For example, say that your salary in the Netherlands is E50,000. Your employer pays E60,000 for that, but E10,000 goes straight to the government (doesn't show on your payslip, used to fund primarily social security systems). After that, you pay income taxes, let's say 30%, so you get E35,000.

Of course, effectively you're paying close to 50% taxes and your employer considers you as costing E60,000, but the two-step process hides part of it and makes it somehow more palatable for the employee/tax-payer. This is a really large part of why European wages are lower than American ones.