Soon I will be graduating from my masters in AI. However since I was planning to go abroad I wanted to see how much worse or better taxation laws are compared to my own country (The Netherlands).

For starters we will compare with the eastern neighbours (Germany). Scale 3 has been removed because its not relevant for me:

NL	from	till	%
1	€ 0	€ 19’982	36,55%
2	€ 19’982	€ 67’072	40,80%
4	€ 67’072	€ ∞	52,00%

source

DE	from	till	%
1	€ 0	€ 7’664	0%
2	€ 7’665	€ 52’153	15%
3	€ 52’154	€ 250’000	42%
4	€ 250’001	€ ∞	45%

source. Just glancing at it and you see a rather big difference. However its even worse with Australia:

AU	from	till	%
1	€ 0	€ 13’250	0%
2	€ 13’250	€ 26’934	9.7%
3	€ 26’934	€ 63’347	22.8%
3	€ 63’347	€ 130’995	30.1%
4	€ 130’995	€ ∞	45%

source (Converted to euros)

So ok, say I earn 3500 euro’s per month, which is an entirely reasonable assumption since I saw multiple government vaccancies with my skill set (or lower) for around that price and I asked a recruiter too who said around that (actually he low-balled me with 3’000-3’500, but I guess that’s his job).

So the amount per year is: 3500 × 12 = 42^′000,

The tax I would pay in the Netherlands then would be: 19^′982 × 0.3655 + (42^′000 − 19^′982) × 0.408 = 16^′286 or 16^′286/42^′000 = 39% goes to taxes from my total income.

For Germany however (42^′000 − 7^′664) × 0.15 = 5^′150 or 5^′150/42^′000 = 12%. That’s quite a dramatic difference. On top of that the VAT is 2% lower in Germany so you’ll have 2% more purchasing power.

So now to calculate for Australia.

(26^′934 − 13^′250) × 0.097 + (42^′000 − 26^′934) × 0.228 = 4^′762 or 4^′762/42^′000 = 11% in taxes, Australia also has a lower VAT (just 10%). And the amount of money going to ‘pensions’ is a lot lower in Australia, rather than 25% (hard to find a right source on this) of the Netherlands only 9% goes to it, which is by the way redeemable as soon as you leave (source). Which is perfect, I just go visit family for a week and get a fat paycheck, because I didn’t want to do pensions anyway in my twenties, I have other costs to worry about.