Someone holding an offer in Dubai and an offer in London is usually comparing two numbers that are not the same kind of number. In the UAE the headline figure is close to what arrives in the account. In Germany it is about 63% of it. The two are written the same way and mean different things.
Currency is the obvious problem and the least interesting one. The harder one is that each system takes its cut at a different point, on a different base, with a different set of things it calls a deduction.
Every figure below comes from the Salary & Offer Studio, calculated under each jurisdiction's own 2026 rules.
The problem
The headline number does not survive the border.
"AED 240,000" and "£70,000" describe different things. The first is close to money received. The second is a figure from which income tax and National Insurance are still to come. Putting them side by side and converting the currency produces a comparison that looks rigorous and is not.
It gets worse with the systems that deduct most. A €60,000 salary in Germany produces €37,694.00 of take-home, because income tax, pension, health, care and unemployment insurance all come out before it reaches you. Nothing about the number €60,000 suggests that.
The Studio deliberately bundles no exchange rate. A rate baked into a tool is stale within a day and invisible to the person relying on it, which is worse than no rate at all. Where two offers are in different currencies, you enter the rate yourself and you know exactly how old it is.
What travels
Four numbers that do compare.
Each of these is a ratio or a local-currency amount, which is what makes them portable. None of them requires you to believe an exchange rate.
| Measure | What it answers | Why it travels |
|---|---|---|
| Kept share | What proportion of gross reaches you | A ratio, so currency cancels out |
| Marginal rate | What the next 100 of gross is worth | The number a raise or a bonus is measured in |
| Employer cost | What the role costs the company | Shows what is being spent that you never see |
| Take-home in local currency | What you can actually spend where you live | Compared against local costs, not converted |
Side by side
The six, each at its own headline figure.
These are not equivalent salaries. They are six ordinary figures in six currencies, shown so the shape of each system is visible. Read down the kept-share and marginal columns, not across the gross column.
| Jurisdiction | Gross | Take-home | Kept | Marginal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UAE | AED 240,000 | AED 240,000.00 | 100% | 0% |
| India — new regime | ₹15,00,000 | ₹14,02,500.00 | 93.50% | 15.60% |
| China — resident | CN¥300,000 | CN¥268,920.00 | 89.64% | 20.00% |
| Canada — Ontario | CA$80,000 | CA$59,683.23 | 74.60% | 33.65% |
| United Kingdom | £70,000 | £51,158.00 | 73.08% | 42.00% |
| Germany — class I | €60,000 | €37,694.00 | 62.82% | 47.15% |
The wedge
How much of what you cost actually reaches you.
Employer cost reframes the same arithmetic in a way that changes how the offer reads. A German employer spends €72,690.00 on a €60,000 salary; the employee receives €37,694.00. Slightly over half of what the role costs arrives in the person doing it.
This is not an argument about which system is better — the contributions buy healthcare, pensions and unemployment cover that other systems charge for separately or not at all. It is an argument about reading an offer accurately. A number that looks low in one system may represent a much larger commitment than a higher number in another.
It also matters in negotiation. Where employer contributions are steep, every increase you ask for costs the employer more than it costs elsewhere, and that shapes what there is room for.
| Jurisdiction | Employer cost | Reaches the employee | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| UAE | AED 240,000.00 | AED 240,000.00 | 100% |
| India — new regime | ₹15,00,000.00 | ₹14,02,500.00 | 93.50% |
| China — resident | CN¥300,000.00 | CN¥268,920.00 | 89.64% |
| Canada — Ontario | CA$86,018.75 | CA$59,683.23 | 69.38% |
| United Kingdom | £79,749.40 | £51,158.00 | 64.15% |
| Germany — class I | €72,690.00 | €37,694.00 | 51.86% |
The edges
Five places the arithmetic surprises people.
Every one of these is a case where the headline rate and the real rate diverge, and where a calculator that walks a simple bracket table gets the wrong answer. The Studio measures the marginal rate by computing the net at gross plus 100, rather than asserting a band, so these show up on their own.
| Where | What happens | The figure |
|---|---|---|
| UK, £100,000–£125,140 | The personal allowance is withdrawn by £1 for every £2 earned, so each extra pound is taxed and also exposes 50p that was untaxed | 62.00% marginal, against 42.00% below it |
| India, just past ₹12,00,000 taxable | Section 87A marginal relief holds the tax to the income above the limit, and the 4% cess rides on top of that | 104.00% marginal until taxable income reaches ₹12,70,588 |
| Canada, CA$80,000 | Alberta costs more than Ontario despite a personal amount nearly twice the size, because its first bracket is 8% against Ontario's 5.05% | CA$4,954.48 provincial against CA$4,454.52 |
| Germany, above €69,750 | The health and care ceiling is passed, so further income no longer attracts those contributions and the marginal rate falls | 47.15% at €60,000, 42.60% at €70,000 |
| China, ¥200,000 to ¥300,000 | The comprehensive income table steps from 10% to 20% in a single move | Kept share falls from 94.26% to 89.64% |
The limits
What this comparison still cannot tell you.
Take-home is one input to a decision about moving countries, and it is the only one arithmetic can settle. Everything below changes the answer and none of it is in the calculation.
Cost of living is the largest omission. A higher kept share in a city where housing costs three times as much is not a better offer. Schooling, healthcare that the employer does or does not carry, the value of a state pension you may never draw, visa terms, notice periods and statutory severance all sit outside the numbers.
The UAE's end-of-service gratuity is the clearest example: it has no equivalent in the other five systems, it is worth a substantial sum over a long tenure, and it appears nowhere in a kept-share comparison. Compare mode prints that caveat next to any UAE side for exactly that reason.
Progressive disclosureTechnical Notes
No market data of any kind
There are no salary benchmarks, no cost-of-living indices and no exchange rates anywhere in the tool. Every figure is arithmetic on what you typed, which is why it can be exact about the calculation and says nothing about whether the offer is competitive.
Each jurisdiction states what it leaves out
Germany's solidarity surcharge is omitted because the 2026 single-filer threshold could not be confirmed from a primary source. India's old regime and its deductions, Canada's Quebec and provincial surtaxes, China's special additional deductions and the UK's Scottish rates are all listed as not modelled, on screen and in the exported PDF.
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