If you're software engineer in Poland and spend some time architecting your contract, you can pay only 5% income tax (+ irrelevant amount for social security) as "R&D tax relief for commercializing IP rights".
Point you're making applies to countries like Belgium or France.
If you're using IPBox as average software engineer that has nothing to do with actual R&D or innovation then you should feel ashamed cuz it's straight doubtful from ethical and moral standpoint
I'm all for progressive taxes, but fuck system where Comarch CEO pays fraction of my tax percentage.
I'm not doing it tho, 15% ryczałt (lump sum?) is low enough to not care, and ipbox seems like tax trap. I'm not paying money to villains like Memcen to lower my taxes.
10% is a gross exaggeration, though. Romania has lower salaries than Poland, as far as I know, and in Romania as a senior engineer in a decent company you can get a total <<net>> compensation of €3.5k - €4k per month, that would be ~$4k - $4.8k per month, so ~$48k - ~58k. Again, net. And probably more since there are companies that give you RSUs/ESPPs, so you can go along for the ride. Not as many as in the US, obviously, but a decent chunk. So you could even push towards something like $70k.
I think even at the biggest FAANGS in the US, you total <<net>> compensation as a senior engineer will be $250k-$300k, leaving the ratio somewhere around 4-5x (and this is for a super limited set of companies and positions; I'd imagine that the average ratio would be closer to 2-3x).
And don't forget that local living expenses are minimal. You'd get to keep maybe even 90% of your salary.
I don't know if whether the numbers you quote for Romania are correct or not (Polish salaries for devs are not even remotely close to that), but a salary that nets you €4k/month after taxes is not very common in Sweden - which is considered a richer country than Romania.
The difference between Sweden and Romania is not between Swedish and Romanian software developers. It's between Swedish and Romanian janitors. The Swedish ones probably make 10x what the Romanian ones make. And most people in Romania are closer to the janitor salary wise, than to the software developer.
> I'd imagine that the average ratio would be closer to 2-3x
To which you replied:
> 10% is a gross exaggeration but "the average ratio would be closer to 2-3x" sounds equally exaggerated in the other direction.
My original example pointed to the top of the range and then I used the median, which is the statistically most relevant indicator for comparing salaries.
> 3x != 2x, and I suspect 3x is still too low; also comparing median salaries is not enough.
Point you're making applies to countries like Belgium or France.