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One thing that's really hard to compare when looking at taxes is the quality of public services you get.

UK has not low taxes by any measure, but certainly lower than eg Germany, at 200k you're looking at effective tax rate of about 35-40% all in. But state schools are a lottery and shut down for 13 weeks a year. Healthcare is good if you can get seen but otherwise it's the private health insurance. Public transport is expensive. Social security in this segment of earnings is non-existent, you would be ineligible for many things (because "earn too much"), unemployment benefits only available if you have 0 savings left and so on.

I'm not sure I'd recommend the UK though it's less bad an option than it seems, it's just a demo.



In UK, can you please tell me how at 200K pounds, the taxes can come down only to 35-40% especially at 125K or above, the 60% tax trap kicks in. [1] If you can specify any tax saving tips or refer to some consultant, I will be grateful.

Really the only way in UK is to put in a large part of your earnings into pension contributions which effectively makes it out of bounds till 55 or 57 from 2028 onwards, which means even if you have FU money you can't use it. Again if you have large RSU payouts due to working at a FAANG, it can be difficult as you start hitting lifetime allowance of your pension contributions.

[1] https://www.nutmeg.com/nuggets/escape-the-60-tax-trap

edit: specifying that the above comment is for UK


I based my guesstimate off a rate of 200k EUR (OP says he's in Germany), or 170k GBP. Income tax and NI come up to 65k according to govt website (assuming you're not paying extras like student loan repayment etc). That's an effective rate of 38%.

The article you link is about marginal rates, and these are indeed all over the place, buy that's a different story.

Tax calculator: https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/estimate-paye-take-home-pay/y...


If you work for yourself you usually create a Ltd. and pay yourself in dividends, not income.


What 60% trap is that? The linked page looks very suspicious and doesn't offer much information.


Between 100k and 125k you lose £1 of your tax allowance for each £2 you earn. Which greatly increases your tax in that window.


It does, but not greatly: for a £110k salary the effective taxes (including NIC) are around 35%.

It is not a good idea to get your tax information from an investment corporation advertisement.




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