About Salary Calculator
One calculation engine, twenty tax systems, named specialists on the numbers and a strict rule about never guessing.
Almost every salary is advertised gross. Almost every decision you make with that salary, whether to take the job, whether you can afford the rent, whether the move abroad actually pays, depends on the net figure. Salary Calculator exists to close that gap, one country at a time.
We run one calculation engine across every country page. What changes between them is the tax configuration: the bands, the thresholds, the contribution ceilings and the local terminology. That is deliberate. It means a fix or an improvement lands everywhere at once, and it means each country is described in its own vocabulary rather than translated into someone else’s.
Who checks the numbers
Three of our calculators are reviewed by a named tax specialist who works in that country’s system for a living. Not a byline. The same person who files returns under those rules checks the schedule we compute with, once for every tax year.
United States
Sam Waltoman
Enrolled Agent · 12 years · New York
Sam qualified as an Enrolled Agent after four years at a Manhattan payroll bureau, reconciling W-2s that did not match what people had actually been paid. He checks the IRS brackets, the standard deduction and the FICA thresholds behind the US and state calculators, and handles multi-state filers and contractors who meet Schedule SE the hard way.
Germany
Anna Marie
Steuerfachangestellte · 11 years · Munich
Anna qualified as a Steuerfachangestellte and spent her first six years in a Munich Kanzlei preparing returns for employees who had never filed one. She checks the official §32a tariff behind the Germany calculator, and specialises in the cases where filing voluntarily pays: Steuerklasse choices, a long Pendlerpauschale, and Kirchensteuer nobody noticed.
Canada
Nathan Brown
Tax & Payroll Specialist · 10 years · Vancouver
Nathan trained at a Vancouver firm handling small business returns, then spent three years inside a payroll department watching CPP and EI from the employer side. He checks the CRA federal and provincial schedules, and can explain why a January paycheque looks different from a November one.
The other seventeen countries do not carry a named reviewer, and we are not going to imply otherwise. What they carry instead is a source: every rate and threshold in those configurations records the tax authority it came from and the date it was checked, and every page links out to that authority so you can verify it yourself.
How we handle accuracy
This is money guidance, so we would rather show a gap than fill it with a confident guess. Three rules follow from that:
- Every constant is sourced. Each rate and threshold in our tax configuration carries the authority it came from and the date it was checked.
- Rates are checked against the authority. Every country’s tax scale, employee contributions and main reliefs are verified against its national tax authority, and each page links to the source it came from.
- Missing components are named, not hidden. If we cannot yet calculate part of a country’s deductions, we say so. US state pages tell you that city and county income taxes, state disability and paid-leave premiums sit outside the figure. They do not quietly vanish into it.
We also never merge separate deductions into one unexplained “tax” figure. Income tax and social contributions are different things with different rules, and showing them separately is the difference between a calculator you can check and one that asks for blind trust.
The calculator and the filing service are different things
The calculator is free, runs entirely in your browser and gives you an estimate. It does not know your tax code, your benefits, your student loan or last year’s carry-forward, and using it creates no relationship between us. Treat the number as a good starting figure, not as your payslip.
Filing is separate work. If you want a return prepared, reviewed and filed, our specialists do that as a paid engagement at a flat price agreed before anything starts — US, Germany and Canada. That is a professional service with a named person attached to it. The estimate on the calculator page is not, and we would rather keep the two clearly apart than blur them.
Scope
Right now the site does one job: gross salary to take-home pay, for twenty countries and all fifty US states. Pension, hourly, bonus and other calculators are planned as separate tools on the same engine.
Get in touch
Found a rate that is wrong, or a country whose rules we have oversimplified? That is the most useful message you can send us. Contact us here.