One salary, every country we cover, and what actually lands in your account.
On €80,000 a year, Italy leaves you the most, but only on Teachers and researchers regime (agevolazione per docenti e ricercatori), which you would have to qualify for. Switch to rules open to anyone to compare without it.
Italy
€72,410 91% of it kept
Most left of the countries we cover
On Teachers and researchers regime (agevolazione per docenti e ricercatori), the best of 3 we checked
Only if you confirm: Available for 6 tax years in total; You must hold a university degree or an equivalent qualification (a degree awarded abroad is not automatically recognised in Italy - you need a 'dichiarazione di valore' from the Italian consulate), you must have been resident abroad other than occasionally, and you must have carried out documented teaching or research work abroad for at least two continuous years at a university or at a public or private research centre. The two years need not be the two immediately before the move, and teaching periods and research periods can be added together to reach them. In Italy you must actually carry out the teaching or research work - the kind of employer does not matter - and become tax resident here. An Italian citizen who never registered with AIRE qualifies if, in the two tax periods before the move, they were resident in another state under a double-tax treaty. You must stay tax resident in Italy for the whole of the relief: move abroad again and the relief stops from the tax period in which you cease to be resident - but, unlike the inbound-worker regime, nothing you have already claimed is taken back. The exemption covers only the pay for the teaching or research activity itself, not your other income. You cannot combine it with the neo-residenti flat tax of art. 24-bis TUIR, and you cannot apply it and the inbound-worker regime to the same income. None of these conditions can be checked by the calculator - you assert them yourself.
Assumes region: Lombardy (Milan)
Open the Italy calculator
Portugal
€57,560 72% of it kept
€14,851 less than the top
On IRS Jovem: partial exemption for young taxpayers, the best of 3 we checked
Only if you confirm: Available for 10 tax years in total; Aged 35 or under on 31 December of the tax year, not counted as a dependant in someone else's household, earning employment (category A) or self-employment (category B) income, and within the first 10 years of earning such income. The option is exercised in the annual return, year by year. Closed to anyone who benefits or has benefited from the NHR regime or from IFICI, who has opted for the former-residents regime of art. 12.º-A CIRS, or whose tax situation is not in order.
Assumes national rules, no region selected
Open the Portugal calculator
Poland
€53,844 67% of it kept
€18,567 less than the top
On Relief for young (ulga dla młodych, PIT-0 for under-26s), the best of 2 we checked
Only if you confirm: Under 26 years of age on the day the income is received. Applies to income from employment (umowa o pracę, stosunek służbowy, praca nakładcza, spółdzielczy stosunek pracy), commission contracts (umowa zlecenia) concluded with a business, apprenticeship/graduate internships, student internships and maternity benefit. It does NOT cover income from management contracts (kontrakt menedżerski), umowa o dzieło or business activity. The exemption is capped at PLN 85,528 per year, a limit SHARED with the return relief (ulga na powrót) and the family 4+ relief. Age and income-source are asserted by the user, not checked by the engine.
Open the Poland calculator
Spain
€53,818 67% of it kept
€18,592 less than the top
Assumes region: Madrid
Open the Spain calculator
Same amount in every country, converted to euros. Each card is the cheapest legal way that
country lets you be taxed on it, and says which one that is.
How these numbers are worked out
Every card runs the same amount through the tax rules of that country for 2026: income
tax, any regional or municipal surcharge, and the social contributions that come with this
kind of income. Nothing is a headline rate. The number you see is what is left.
Where a country lets you be taxed in more than one way, we calculate every option you are
allowed on that amount and show the best one, named on the card. This matters more than it
sounds: taking the first regime listed in each country's rules would rank countries by the
order of their paperwork rather than by their tax. A regime with a revenue ceiling drops out
of the comparison by itself once you go above it.
What the machine cannot check, it does not assume quietly. Age, profession, whether this is
your first year of residence: if a regime rests on something like that, the card says so and
you decide whether it applies to you. Switch to rules open to anyone to
remove those regimes from the comparison entirely.
Each card also lists what it assumed about you beyond the amount, and links to the full
calculator for that country, where every one of those assumptions is editable and the whole
breakdown is shown line by line, with sources.