Gross vs net salary difference, explained with numbers: one $150,000 letter keeps 56.7% in Berlin and 79.8% in Singapore

By Skyler Bissell · September 28, 2026 · 10 min read

A USD 150,000 offer is €129,450 in Berlin, of which €56,059 goes to income tax and social insurance and €73,391 reaches the account: the letter keeps 56.7%. The same offer is SGD 192,000 in Singapore, of which SGD 38,730 goes to income tax and the employee's CPF contribution and SGD 153,270 reaches the account, 79.8%. Same gross, in dollars. Two nets, $85,041 and $119,742 once converted back. The gap between gross and net is the whole difference between what a contract says and what you can spend, and it is a different size in every country.

This page defines the terms and shows the stack on one letter in ten cities. How to read the letter itself, the 13th and 14th instalments in Madrid and Lisbon and the Dutch holiday allowance clause, is on is a European job offer gross or net, which walks a EUR 60,000 letter clause by clause; I have not repeated that here.

Three terms, and what each country's payslip calls them

Gross is the contract number. Brutto in Berlin and Zurich, bruto in Amsterdam, bruttolön in Stockholm, gross pay in London and Dublin, and in New York the figure on the offer letter and in box 1 of the W-2 before pre-tax deductions. It is the base every percentage on this page is measured against. It excludes the employer's own contributions, which in much of Europe add a fifth to a third again on top and never touch the payslip; what an employee costs an employer prices that second bill, and the OECD's Taxing Wages reports call the gap between that total labour cost and net pay the tax wedge.

Net is gross less the deductions the employee cannot refuse, and the payslip calls it netto, nettolön or net pay. The lines are income tax (federal, state and city in New York; federal and cantonal and communal in Zurich; municipal and state in Stockholm) and the employee's mandatory social contributions (pension and unemployment insurance nearly everywhere, statutory health insurance where the law collects it through payroll, National Insurance in London, PRSI and the Universal Social Charge in Dublin, CPP and EI in Toronto, CPF in Singapore). The OECD's net personal average tax rate is the same idea expressed as a share: income tax plus employee contributions, less cash benefits, over gross. For a childless single person the cash benefits are zero, and that rate is one minus the keep rate below.

Take-home is what arrives. On a plain payslip it equals net. It falls below net when you choose to defer salary into a 401(k) or a pension plan, buy insurance or a transit pass through payroll, or repay a student loan through the tax system, and it can rise above the simple net where a refundable credit is paid through wages. Every figure on this page is net with nothing voluntary deducted, so net and take-home are the same number here.

One letter, ten cities

A single person, no children, no voluntary pension deferral, on USD 150,000 converted once at the exchange rate in our build and taxed as each city taxes it in 2026. The cities run west to east. The rankings page sorts them; this table is here to show the stack, so the order is geographic.

Engine figures, 2026 rules, one person aged 35 to 44, tax resident, at the exchange rate in our build. Income tax and contributions means every mandatory employee line: New York federal, state and city tax with Social Security and Medicare; Austin federal only with the same payroll taxes; Toronto federal and Ontario tax with CPP and EI; London income tax and National Insurance; Dublin income tax, USC and PRSI; Amsterdam Box 1 with the national insurance contributions inside it; Berlin income tax without church tax plus pension, health, care and unemployment insurance; Zurich federal, cantonal and communal tax plus AHV, unemployment and the occupational pension contribution; Stockholm municipal and state tax; Singapore resident income tax plus the employee's CPF at the 2026 ceiling. Where a country charges its health system through an insurer rather than payroll, the premium is outside these figures; see the next section.

What net still leaves out

The health premium, in some countries. In Berlin, Stockholm and Dublin the money that pays for healthcare is inside the line above: a German employee's statutory health contribution is a payroll deduction, a Swede's is inside the municipal tax, an Irish resident's is the general tax bill. In New York, Austin, Amsterdam and Zurich the premium is a separate bill paid out of net: an employer plan's employee share and deductible in the American cities, the Dutch nominal premium, the Swiss compulsory basic insurance bought from a private insurer. So the Zurich net above is before a bill that a Berliner has already paid. The true tax burden once healthcare is counted puts both on one basis, and that page, rather than this table, is where a US-to-Europe rate comparison belongs.

The pension you chose. A 401(k) deferral or a salary-sacrifice pension contribution reduces take-home below the net here and reduces the tax bill with it; the figures above defer nothing, so that a reader sees the statutory stack and nothing else. What happens to that deferral on a move is its own question, covered elsewhere on the blog.

The employer's bill, which sits above gross and is invisible on the payslip, and the calendar, which changes how the year arrives without changing its size: fourteen instalments in Madrid, thirteen in Milan, twelve plus a May allowance in Amsterdam. Both are on the offer-letter page linked above. And the cost of living, which is what turns two nets into two lives: the equivalent salary abroad is the gross that keeps your net cash after rent, healthcare and childcare, which is a different question from the one this page answers and the one our comparison pages solve.

Why the same gross keeps 56.7% in one city and 79.8% in another

Three bands, and the top rate of income tax predicts none of them.

The ten cities sort into three bands, and the top rate of income tax is a poor guide to which band a city lands in. The high-keep band is Singapore, Zurich and Austin. Singapore's resident income tax is low and its 20% employee CPF contribution stops at the Ordinary Wage ceiling, which the CPF Board sets at SGD 8,000 a month from 1 January 2026, so most of a SGD 192,000 salary pays no CPF at all. Zurich's federal tax on CHF 121,500 is small, the cantonal and communal layers are moderate, and the contributions are modest. Austin has no state income tax, and Social Security stops at the wage base.

The middle band is New York, London, Toronto and Stockholm, in the sixties. New York adds state and city tax to Austin's federal bill and keeps 66.8% against Austin's 75.9%: the two rows share a country, a gross and a federal ladder, and differ by the local layers alone. London's personal allowance has been tapered to nothing by GBP 110,700 and most of the salary sits in the 40% band, but National Insurance falls to 2% above the upper earnings limit. Toronto's federal and Ontario ladders together reach the low fifties at the top, but CPP stops at the Canada Revenue Agency's 2026 maximum of CAD 74,600 and EI at its own ceiling, so the contributions on the top half of the salary are small. Stockholm's municipal tax is flat and its state tax starts high up; and the general pension contribution the employee pays is credited back in full against income tax.

The low-keep band is the three euro cities. Berlin keeps 56.7%: the income tax ladder under section 32a EStG reaches its 42% zone at EUR 69,878, well under this letter, and the four social insurance lines run at close to a fifth of gross up to their ceilings. Amsterdam keeps 58.5%, with the top Box 1 rate of 49.5% starting under EUR 80,000 and the general and labour credits tapered to nothing at this income. Dublin keeps 60.8%, because Revenue's 20% band ends at EUR 44,000 for a single person and everything above it pays 40% plus USC and PRSI. The three differ from each other by a few points and from Singapore by more than twenty, and none of the three has a higher top rate than Toronto.

Two rules follow.

First, the gap between gross and net grows with the salary in every one of these cities, because every ladder is progressive, so a keep rate quoted for one salary does not transfer to another; the EUR 60,000 letter on the offer-letter page keeps far more of itself in Dublin than the EUR 129,450 letter here does. Second, contribution ceilings do as much work as tax brackets: the cities at the top of the table are the ones where the contribution stops partway up the salary, and the ones at the bottom are where it runs to the top or nearly so. Take-home pay by country ranks 70 countries on this letter, and the household's whole picture, tax plus the bills that vary, is on the pillar, how countries tax your salary.

FAQ

To see the stack on your own letter, open the New York to Berlin comparison or the Austin to Singapore comparison, type the gross from the offer, and read the Take-home tab: it prints each line between gross and net for both cities, then goes on to the bills net has to cover.

Sources. The definitions of the net personal average tax rate and the tax wedge: OECD, Taxing Wages 2026, overview. Singapore, the SGD 8,000 Ordinary Wage ceiling from 1 January 2026 and the 20% employee rate: CPF Board, what is the Ordinary Wage ceiling and CPF Board, how much CPF contributions to pay. Canada, the 2026 maximum pensionable earnings and the 5.95% employee rate: Canada Revenue Agency, CPP contribution rates, maximums and exemptions. Germany, the 2026 tariff zones: Bundesministerium der Justiz, section 32a EStG. Ireland, the 2026 single standard rate band: Revenue, tax rates, bands and reliefs. United States, the 2026 rate tables and standard deduction: IRS, Revenue Procedure 2025-32. All pages retrieved 28 September 2026. Every figure in the table is computed by cityparity's engine on the same basis as the take-home ranking; per-field provenance is in data/_meta.json, per the methodology.

Figures here come from cityparity's per-city engine and were current at publication; tax rates, contribution ceilings and exchange rates move, so treat any single number as a strong estimate and run your own inputs. Where our comparison pages quote an equivalent salary, it is the bar an offer has to clear in the destination city and it is not a job offer. See the methodology.