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At least in the UK, overheads are usually over 100%.

This sounds like quite an outlandish figure, could you please elaborate? For example, an ERC grant would allow for a maximum of 25% of the so called "indirect costs", that is, one fourths of all the the direct costs (gross salaries, materiel, travel, etc) gets paid as a lump sum, and this usually goes to the institution. How do you end up with over 100% overheads?

I recall putting a grant proposal together. An RA salary of £40K was charged to the project at £110K. Those numbers are roughly accurate, might actually have been slightly higher.

I’m not sure how that gets accounted in different schemes, perhaps it is somehow impossible in ERC grants, but it is certainly the case in some grants.

25% cap would I think make most universities bankrupt overnight.

I suspect a large part of that 110K would be the government's cut. Again, coming back to the french system, an employee getting 40K after taxes costs ~80K to the institution there. I didn't think of the salary taxes as overheads, we count them as direct costs.

....at best :( - more in certain universities.

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