Methodology

How a salary is calculated here

This page explains how EU Pay Concierge turns a gross salary into a net salary and an employer cost, what the calculation includes and leaves out, how the rules are checked, and how often they are updated. It describes the same engine that produces every figure on the site, including the worked examples in the guides.

1. The model: one year under one month’s rules

Every country is implemented as a separate module with the same interface. A module receives an annual gross salary, the employee’s situation and a month, and returns every line of the calculation for the year. The month decides which rules apply: the calculator uses the rules in force in the current month (October 2026) as if they applied for the whole year. When a rule changes during the year, the result changes from the month the new rule takes effect.

All amounts are calculated per year in the country’s own currency. The monthly figure is the annual figure divided by 12. In countries with 13 or 14 salary payments (Austria (14), Greece (14), Italy (13), Portugal (14), Spain (14)), the calculator also shows the amount per payment, and the special tax treatment of those payments is part of the module.

The result is the final annual liability: what the employee and employer owe for the year once everything is settled. Where payroll withholding during the year differs from that final amount, as in Spain, Portugal, France, Austria, Poland or Lithuania, the module also returns the net that appears on the monthly payslip, and the calculator shows both.

2. From gross to net, in order

1. Contribution bases. The module works out the base for each social contribution: the gross salary, limited by any ceiling and raised to any legal minimum base, and reduced where a country has a special regime for low pay.
2. Employee contributions. Each contribution is the base multiplied by its statutory rate. Contributions are rounded the way the country rounds them, for example to whole lei per month in Romania.
3. Taxable income. Gross minus the contributions that are deductible in that country, minus statutory flat allowances such as the German employee lump sum or the Polish employee costs.
4. Income tax. The national scale, and where they apply, regional, municipal and church taxes and surcharges. Allowances are deducted from income; tax credits are deducted from the tax and are limited to the tax due unless the law makes them refundable.
5. Net salary = gross − employee contributions − income tax.
6. Employer contributions on their own bases and rates, minus any statutory employer relief such as the French RGDU or the Belgian structural reduction.
7. Employer cost = gross + employer contributions.

For example, at €3,000 a month in Germany, a single employee pays €652.50 in social insurance and €293.08 in wage tax and keeps €2,054.42; the employer pays €3,652.20 in total. The German guide walks through each step.

3. Net to gross and employer budget to gross

The calculator also works backwards: from a target net salary, or from an employer’s total budget, to the gross salary that produces it. Payroll functions are not always smooth. Ceilings, phase-outs and minimum bases create kinks and occasionally jumps. The solver therefore first scans the range of possible salaries to find where the target is crossed, then narrows it down by bisection and finally checks each cent around the answer. If no gross salary produces the target exactly, because the target falls in a jump, the calculator says so and shows the closest result.

4. The employee’s situation

By default a calculation is for a single employee aged 35 without children, in the capital region, on a permanent full-time contract, not a church member. Each country then asks only the questions that change the result there: household and children in most countries, tax class in Germany, municipality in the Nordic countries, contract type in Spain and the Netherlands, age-based reliefs in Poland, Portugal and Greece, main or second job in Romania, and so on. A question that does not affect the result in a country is not asked.

5. What is not included

The calculator models the general rules for employees. Across the 27 countries, 135 specific circumstances are listed as not included, and each is shown next to the result for that country. Typical examples:

• private or optional insurance that replaces a statutory scheme, such as private health insurance in Germany;
• sector-specific or company-specific rates, such as accident insurance that depends on the industry, where a typical rate is used and labelled as such;
• individual deductions claimed in a tax return, such as commuting, mortgage interest, donations or medical expenses;
• special regimes for impatriates, researchers or particular professions, except where a module models them explicitly;
• benefits paid outside payroll, such as child benefit, which are mentioned but not added to net pay;
• meal vouchers, company cars and other benefits in kind.

6. Sources and confidence

Every parameter in a module is linked to a source: a law, an official gazette, a tax or social security authority, official guidance, or a recognised secondary source. Each source is listed with its publisher and the date it was accessed. Each line of a result carries a confidence mark: official source, secondary source, or unconfirmed for this period. Statutory rates are displayed exactly as legislated.

7. How the rules are verified

• Official test tables. Where an authority publishes test cases, the module must reproduce them. The German wage tax, for instance, matches all 258 values of the Federal Ministry of Finance’s 2026 test table, and the Swedish module reproduces every row of the Skatteverket 2026 tax tables it was tested against.
• Independent calculators. Each country was cross-checked against the official calculator where one exists, such as the Austrian Ministry of Finance gross-net calculator or the French Urssaf model, and otherwise against a reputable independent calculator, at six salary levels from about €800 to €15,000 a month and for several family situations. Every difference had to be resolved or explained.
• Automated tests. 27 country test suites run before every deployment. They check that every result adds up, that every line cites an existing source, that net-to-gross and cost-to-gross find the right salary, and that previously corrected values stay corrected. A deployment that fails a test does not go live.

8. Update cadence

• Every January and whenever a country changes its rules during the year, the affected module gets a new dated rule set.
• Changes that are announced or still in parliament are recorded as provisional and are not used until they are law. The 2027 changes guide lists the ones we are tracking.
• Every country page shows the date its rules were last checked. The last full review of all 27 countries was completed on 13 October 2026.
• Exchange rates for amounts shown in euros are the European Central Bank’s daily reference rates, refreshed each working day. The fallback rates, used if the daily rates cannot be loaded, are those of 13 Oct 2026.

9. Limits

A general calculator cannot know a person’s full tax position, collective agreement or employer-specific rates. The results are estimates under general rules, clearly labelled, and not individual tax, payroll or legal advice. For a decision that depends on the exact figure, check with the tax authority, a payroll provider or an adviser in the country concerned.

Questions about the method, or a figure that looks wrong? Contact us. Start a calculation for any country, for example France or Poland.

Last updated 23 Oct 2026.