Income tax by country
What a yearly salary leaves you with in ten countries
Effective rate
24,4%
top bracket of the scale — 40%
Taxable base
47 430,00 £
allowance 12 570,00 £
How the tax falls across the brackets
Base: 60 000,00 £ − deductible contributions 0,00 £ − allowance 12 570,00 £ = 47 430,00 £.
Mandatory employee contributions
This is an information tool: one earner, employment income only, no family status, child credits or regional surcharges. Amounts are shown to the cent — a country’s own rounding to whole units is not applied. Check the primary source linked above before acting on a figure.
Reference block: the method, a worked example and answers to common questions. It does not affect the calculation above.
How it is calculated
- This calculator answers one question: how much of a yearly salary actually reaches your pocket in a given country. You enter the gross yearly income — before tax and before withholdings, the figure an offer quotes. The currency follows the country and comes from the reference book rather than from a field, so pounds can never be charged on the Turkish scale by accident.
- The order of the calculation is the same everywhere; only its steps differ. First the mandatory employee contributions are charged — pension, health, social — each on its own scale and against its own cap. Then the taxable base is assembled: base = income - deductible contributions - allowance. Not every contribution is deductible: Poland, Türkiye, Kazakhstan and Cyprus tax what the withholdings left, while the UK, the US, Georgia, Armenia and Serbia charge the whole income. The base then runs through the progressive scale, where each bracket charges only its own layer. The last step is a credit, where a country grants relief that way — in Türkiye it is the tax on the yearly minimum wage, which every employee has exempted.
- Allowances are built differently too, and the table shows it. The UK personal allowance of £12,570 falls by £1 for every £2 of income above £100,000 and disappears at £125,140 — so over that stretch the real marginal rate is higher than the headline 40%. Poland does not deduct its free amount at all: it is the scale’s own first bracket at 0%, and the 120,000 złoty threshold above it is measured on the whole base, those 30,000 included. In the UAE the scale is a single bracket at 0%.
- The figure that makes countries comparable is not the top bracket but the effective rate: (tax + contributions) / income. It accounts both for brackets charging only their own layer and for contributions running into a cap almost everywhere — which is why it can even fall again on large salaries. All the figures come from a reference book the backend serves with the day it took effect; under the table sits a link to the primary source, the country’s own tax authority, and that date. If the service cannot be reached the page computes on the copy compiled into the app and says so plainly.
Worked example
United Kingdom, £60,000 a year. The personal allowance is 12,570, so the taxable base is 47,430. Tax: 37,700 * 20% = 7,540 plus 9,730 * 40% = 3,892, which is £11,432. Employee National Insurance: 8% on earnings between 12,570 and 50,270 (3,016) plus 2% on the remaining 9,730 (194.60), which is 3,210.60. Take-home pay is £45,357.40 and the effective rate is 24.4%, even though part of the income was charged at 40%.
Poland, 120,000 złoty a year. Employee social contributions: 11.26% (pension and disability) = 13,512 plus 2.45% (sickness) = 2,940, so 16,452 — and they do cut the base. The health contribution is charged on 120,000 - 16,452 = 103,548 at 9% = 9,319.32, but it does not cut the tax base. The tax: a base of 103,548, the first 30,000 at 0% and the remaining 73,548 at 12% = 8,825.76. Take-home pay is 85,402.92 złoty and the effective rate is 28.8%.
Frequently asked questions
Why are Germany, France and Spain not on the list?
Because their tax cannot honestly be written as a bracket table. Germany computes income tax from a continuous formula rather than from brackets; in France the amount depends on the family quotient; in Spain each autonomous community adds its own scale to the national one. Averaging that into "one rate" produces a plausible but wrong figure — and on a tax page that is worse than a missing country.
Are US state taxes included?
No. This is the federal tax only, with the standard deduction and the single filing status, plus Social Security and Medicare. In states with no income tax — Texas, Florida, Washington — that is the whole picture. In California or New York several more percent come on top, and the real take-home pay is noticeably lower than the figure here.
Why is the effective rate lower than the top bracket?
Because a bracket charges only its own layer of income, never the whole of it. A £60,000 salary does reach the 40% band, but the first 12,570 is not taxed at all and the next 37,700 goes at 20% — which averages out at about a quarter. For the same reason, reaching a higher bracket can never reduce take-home pay: the higher rate applies to the excess alone.
Why does the Polish health contribution have a different base?
That is how the Polish calculation works: the health levy is charged on income net of the social contributions already withheld, so its base is smaller than the gross salary. The contributions table shows it in its own "Contribution base" column. Since 2022 that levy no longer cuts the income tax base either — it used to, and that single change moved take-home pay for millions of people.
Are employer contributions included?
No, deliberately. The calculator answers "how much reaches me", and employer contributions are paid on top of the salary and never reach the pay packet. They change what an employee costs the company — a different question with a different payer. For the same reason the Kazakh calculation leaves out ОПВР, which the employer pays.
Where do the figures come from and how often are they updated?
From official publications by tax authorities and finance ministries: HMRC, the IRS, podatki.gov.pl, the Cyprus Tax Department, GİB, Kazakhstan’s State Revenue Committee, the Tax Code of Georgia, Armenia’s State Revenue Committee and the Serbian Tax Administration. The link to the primary source and the effective date sit right under the table. Rates change at the borders of fiscal years — 1 January, 6 April in the UK, 1 February for the Serbian allowance — and the book is versioned by date rather than overwritten.
Can I compute on a previous year’s scale?
Not yet: the page computes on the version in force today. The machinery is already there — the reference book stores versions with the day each took effect and can serve the one that applied on a given date — what is missing is the history for these countries. That is a separate piece of work, and until it lands the result is best read as an estimate for the current year.
Does it account for tax residency and double taxation?
No. It assumes you are a tax resident of the country and that all the income was earned there. Non-residents are taxed under different rules almost everywhere, and income arriving from abroad brings double taxation treaties into play — where the answer depends on which country you spent more than 183 days in and which treaty is in force between them. That calculation is individual, and this page does not replace it.