Expat Total Tax Burden Calculator (Compare Countries)

About the Expat Total Tax Burden Calculator (Compare Countries)

Moving abroad for work? The salary on an offer tells only half the story: what you keep depends on income tax, social contributions, the VAT or sales tax inside everything you buy, and the tax on the home you live in. This calculator puts all four side by side for up to three of 12 countries, for one person employed on a salary and tax resident there, on each country's published rules.

Income tax and employee contributions are worked out with MySmartCoPilot's own country calculators (PAYE and National Insurance, US federal and state withholding, Germany's wage tax and social insurance, Singapore's resident rates and CPF, and more): the measures the OECD's Taxing Wages starts from. The consumption tax is the standard rate inside the share of take-home pay you spend at it, and you enter the property tax, which is set locally. Nothing you type leaves your browser.

What is counted

• Income tax: national income tax, with the state or provincial tax where the country has one (US states, Canadian provinces), Germany’s solidarity surcharge, Ireland’s Universal Social Charge and Australia’s Medicare levy.
• Social contributions you pay as an employee: National Insurance, Social Security and Medicare, CPP or QPP and EI, German pension, health, care and unemployment insurance, PRSI, the ACC earners’ levy, UIF and, for citizens and permanent residents, Singapore’s CPF.
• Consumption tax: the standard VAT, GST or sales tax rate inside the share of take-home pay you spend at it: spending × rate ÷ (1 + rate).
• Property tax: the yearly amount you enter, such as council tax, municipal rates or Grundsteuer.

What is left out

Employer contributions (paid on top of your salary, so not out of your pay), cash benefits and family reliefs, tax on savings, investments and capital gains, wealth and inheritance taxes, city or county income taxes, church tax, excise duties on fuel, alcohol and tobacco, and car taxes. Australia’s super (paid by the employer on top of the salary) and KiwiSaver (a savings scheme you can leave) are not counted, nor is India’s EPF, whose rules for employees from abroad differ from those for Indian employees; Singapore’s CPF is counted for citizens and permanent residents, as the compulsory deduction from pay it is.

Rules for people who move

Most countries tax a newcomer like anyone else once he or she is tax resident, often after 183 days in a year; a part-year resident is taxed differently in the year of the move. Social security can differ: Singapore’s CPF is only for citizens and permanent residents, the pension schemes of the UAE and Saudi Arabia cover their own and other Gulf states’ nationals, not other foreign employees, and a worker posted abroad under a social security agreement can keep paying into the home country’s scheme instead. Some countries give newcomers reduced tax on part of the salary for a few years; such regimes are not applied here. A tax treaty decides which country taxes income earned in the other.

Countries included

Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States. Each country’s figures come from MySmartCoPilot’s calculator for that country, which cites the official sources it follows; for the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia they follow the published rules directly (no income tax on salaries, no employee contributions for foreign employees). The comparison lists the sources under each result.

Limitations

• One person employed on a salary, tax resident for the whole year, with no other income, reliefs or family: couples, children and the self-employed pay differently.
• The consumption tax uses one standard rate on the share of spending you choose; reduced rates, exemptions and excise duties are not modelled.
• For a US state the statewide sales tax rate is filled in from its revenue department; cities and counties add their own, so enter the combined rate where you would live.
• US state income tax is worked out for the states the US paycheck calculator models; for another state you enter its rate. City and county income taxes are not included.
• Amounts stay in each country’s currency: compare the shares of gross salary, or convert the totals with the Currency Converter.
• An estimate on the published rules for the current tax year: each country’s tax office decides what you owe.

Privacy

On this device: nothing is sent

Everything happens in your browser. What you enter or open here is not uploaded or stored by MySmartCoPilot.