A company needs to spend €95k to pay someone €39k as net salary in France | Hacker News Reader

A company needs to spend €95k to pay someone €39k as net salary in France

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8 pointsdelichon14 comments

As mentioned in the comments there, the actual sum according to the official calculator is that a gross salary of €60,000 would cost the employer €84,982 and net the employee €40,504 [0] (still really high though).

[0] https://mon-entreprise.urssaf.fr/simulateurs/salaire-brut-ne...

Good input. I expect the URSSAF number does not include additional compulsory costs like healthcare ("mutuelle santé", though in France this will be much less than 10k a year. So total may depend on how exactly it is calculated.

I've never actually lived in France and would appreciate a bit of detail on that. I had thought that France has full public healthcare, but trying to google this now, I'm getting conflicting details about people having to get that mutuelle and possibly additional top-ups. What is covered by the state? What is required/expected from the employer? And what if anything does an individual need to pay on top of that?

I mean, I have sympathy for the idea of everyone having full access to public healthcare regardless of financial situation, but don't quite understand a system where you both pay massive taxes, and then have to still pay extra; so the people who need it the most would still be left untreated?

Mutual (or private) insurance fills gaps like:

- a procedure is considered elective under the public insurance coverage

- public coverage only provides partial reimbursement and the insurance covers the difference

In general, no one is left untreated for "real" (YMMV) health issues and private coverage is more of a luxury perk on top of public healthcare.

Edit: public healthcare is definitely not a "free for all everything is covered" bonanza, which I think most people find logical. That said, one can always argue that some things aren't covered that should (or vice versa if you're the government and trying to cut costs).

Well, I mentioned private coverage specifically because it is mandatory since 2016: All private employers must offer it, employees have to take it, and cost is split.

Oh, that part.

(political opinion disclaimer) IMO, that part's basically just "cost-saving" misdirection/smoke screen (eg it's not "public spending" but we're all spending it). I think that lines up with your question about "why both taxes and having to have private on top".

But in general, "people going untreated" is not much of a concern even if, for example, they don't work and don't private insurance.

Also worth noting, though, that the private insurance premiums in France are nothing like in the US (for example), not least because they don't have to cover anywhere near as much.

To compare with the US you would need to adjust for hours worked (Americans work more hours per year) and pick some numbers for the employer paid health plan, and employee paid unemployment insurance (to get equivalent cover as the dole in France).

Hours worked makes a huge difference to the percentages. AI said:

  USA: ~1,705 hours/year
  France: ~1,487 hours/year

You actually need to convert that to non-working hours (since we live and work for our non-working hours not our working hours), plus on top of that you would need to adjust for commuting time (AI said 54 minutes for US and 50 minutes for France per working day - difficult because highly location-dependant).

Raw money is highly misleading.

> pick some numbers for the employer paid health plan

Don't forget to account for real annual healthcare costs, insurance premiums are just one part of the story, but you still need to pay out of pocket for deductibles and copays. It feels like there are so many benefit that we take for granted in much of EU (even if not all of them apply universally) that you have to budget for in the US and they also incur poorly understood but very real psychological cost.

I'm not in France but I graduated from university with 0 EUR in student loans because there were no tuition fees and the accommodation, food, and public transport were heavily subsidized and easily paid for with a part-time job. I don't need a car because we have a decent and safe public transport.

When I took a sabbatical from work and quit my job I didn't qualify for benefits which means that I had to pay around ~50 EUR a month for health insurance. I could continue seeing specialists the same as I did before and I didn't pay a single cent out of pocket all year. I've seen people talk about how they pay $100-$200 a month for the same medication and that's with expensive insurance and then hundreds more for appointments, how they're having to fight insurance companies, scavenge for deals on medications at various pharmacies and it all sounds so exhausting.

If I lived in the US, I think trying to repeat what I did here would've put me at serious risk of homelessness and inescapable life-long debt, especially if I had some bad luck with my health.

You also need to understand 3300 EUR net in France is good money. Its probably something close to 80th percentile in terms of salaries in France.

It's good money for a reason.

In France, you don't pay US prices for daycare for your children, you don't have to save up to send your children to university, and so on.

This sort of comparison is difficult to do well. Say you compare Paris with Los Angeles. Should you include a car since that's necessary in one of the cities you compare, or leave it out since living in the other without a car is perfectly reasonable?

This is from the point of view of employers so the fact that worked hours are also on the lower side in France makes it even worse.

Interestingly, according to the chart someone in Germany gets the same 39k net (from 60k gross) BUT is 20k a year cheaper for the employer (total cost 75k vs 95k)...

In states like NY and CA it's probably similar if in net salary you don't include 401k and health insurance.

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