Hacker News Reader

Comment by seivan | Hacker News Reader

Many of the Irish and Swedish safety nests are not sustainable under the current economy and will eventually crash.

I love it whenever people bring up Sweden and don't realise that countries like Sweden and Germany can't sustain the benefits they give out. When I get older I won't have the same access.

Germany pays around 50% taxes, Sweden it's around 30-40% for software developer salaries.

View on HN

Sweden had a deficit of 0.40% of GDP in 2011 (last year I have figures for), in that same year the US had a budget deficit of about 10% of GDP.

Furthermore, maternity leave and holiday time are neither expensive nor are they getting more so in the future.

What is more worrying in the long term are benefits associated with retirement because due to demographic changes that cost will continue to grow even as the number of people in the labour force stays steady or slowly shrinks. Those problems are not unique to Sweden.

Thank your making an informed statement about this. I don't think parent knew what he was talking about, his figures about tax rates in Sweden were far from accurate or knowledgeable.

50% taxes in Germany? Example: you get 42.000 Euro/year, you pay ~20% taxes. If you earn 100.000 Euro/year, you pay 30%.

I am sorry, I should have said Berlin. 100k euro a year is not 30% in Berlin. Please check your source again.

Berlin is in Germany. You could check the official tax calculator: https://www.bmf-steuerrechner.de

I am aware of it being in Germany, I'm also aware of the difference in taxes between states. I used this http://www.parmentier.de/steuer/steuer.htm?wagetax.htm is it wrong?

The taxes are the same everywhere in Germany. What differs is how much you pay for pension insurance (and how much you get out of it, IIRC).

So the numbers "If you earn 100.000 Euro/year, you pay 30%" are not wrong for a single man?

Correct, they are not wrong.

Its like this in Germany (tax wise): (http://i.imgur.com/6oiGx5B.png) - the lower blue curve is the amount of tax you pay. The x-axis is the amount of money you get (on which you have to pay tax) and the y-axis is the tax percentage. This is for self-employed people only, regular employees will deduct 1000 Euros from the amount ("Arbeitnehmerpauschbetrag"). Other amounts such as the health insurance can also be deducted.

One side note: the link you have given also calculates health, pension and unemployment insurances. This might be confused with tax, but one should be make it clear that self-employed people don't have to have pension and unemployment insurance and health insurance is much higher than for regular employees. [But one can (in practice) get around paying for health insurance, but no sensible person will do that. - Nobody enforces that you have a health insurance if you are self employed.]

I am referring to the whole shebang. From what I know, pension and unemployment insurances are mandatory. Am I wrong?

Now, with pension and unemployment insurances, will the tax bracket be higher than 30% for 100k ?

You are right, no one sensible would go without the health care portion. But some people (moi) don't trust pension with governments. (Argentina, Hungary.. etc)

Now, if those things are mandatory, how much would be left of a 70k salary? Still on the 30%?

For employees, pension and unemployment are mandatory, correct.

Don't mix up tax and health/pension/unemployment because (that was the starting point of this thread) one can believe that if you say 50% tax these insurances might come on top of that.

Otherwise, if you want to know how much you will have on your bank account after getting 70k/year, your link was very good AFAICS. You will most likely get something like 40k out of it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com