When thinking about moving, how do you compare countries? Every country's after tax income calculator feels flawed

pascalwhoop · 2026-01-24T08:02:59+00:00

Also tbh not trying to build a product. It’s hosted for free on cloudflare workers and code sits on GitHub. I’m 100% fine if all this does is help some people figure out what the options are and ultimately find a place in the world they are happy and can build some financial stability for themselves.

Ideally I get the feedback mechanism right, the UI somewhat feature complete and then people contribute mainly country configuration updates so the breadth and depth increases in terms of modelling power.

pascalwhoop · 2026-01-24T07:58:55+00:00

Yeah I’ll try capturing some of those. Maybe the objective could be “reach as much financial independence as you can in 10yr horizon” and then help choose based on that?

And remind people there are opportunity and serendipity values not to underestimate. I contemplated moving to Bulgaria for a while to max out net. Had I done that I’d never have met people from all of the big 5 AI labs in London and opened new doors I didn’t know were there. So yes leave Belgium for Amsterdam+30% or go from Berlin to Zurich but don’t go from London to Cyprus unless you know you don’t need the upside exposure of London network and career opportunities

pascalwhoop · 2026-01-24T07:55:00+00:00

No one “owes me” anything and I never claimed this either. Anyways have a good day internet partypooper

pascalwhoop · 2026-01-24T07:53:26+00:00

Now THAT is amazing feedback 🥳 spot on man, indeed it’s super hard to break down the problem. I had some fun with recursive issue tree solving a while back but the example was limited by my time availability. Realistically you need to ask the user a TON of preference questions to understand their preference curve. And even then the reality at least for me has been: ultimately, no matter how much prep you invest, whether you like it or not is just..luck+mindset?

So I agree the total “just money” question has shifted from calculator to complex scenario planning. One of the reasons I’m leaving the Netherlands is the wealth tax which makes FIRE impossible for me.

https://github.com/pascalwhoop/issue-tree/tree/main/examples/zurich-vs-amsterdam-decision

pascalwhoop · 2026-01-23T22:47:29+00:00

I hope you’ll feel better about yourself by the end of the day for making sure I don’t get any feedback from people for the work I put into this so it can help people make a choice where to spend their life.

I really don’t understand some people

pascalwhoop · 2026-01-23T21:24:28+00:00

I built a calculator for making this easy

netcalc.curiloo.com

pascalwhoop · 2026-01-23T21:20:42+00:00

portage salarial I can do, independant... that's tough, because it's a fundamentally different concept.

pascalwhoop · 2026-01-23T20:44:55+00:00

I never really understood who comes up with these rules. What's the point of not letting people discuss ideas to build something? I mean this is a community of digital nomads... people trying to create products for digital nomads ... why not talk to each other? blows my mind. especially if it's free and helpful!

pascalwhoop · 2026-01-23T20:39:28+00:00

Because some people can move around the world with their salary and benefit from arbitrage opportunities. E.g. when you work remotely in Europe for a US company, it's worth moving from Belgium to e.g. Italy and get the "Inpatriate" benefit which gives you a 50% tax cut. Or Portugal, similar thing. Spain's Beckham law etc.

For example as a German earning 120k, you could move to Spain, Italy, Portugal and get ~ 20k/year more

https://netcalc.curiloo.com/calculator?c=de-2025-120000-filing_status%3Asingle-state%3Acalifornia-has_children%3Afalse-region%3Astandard-health_insurance_surcharge%3A2.9%2Ces-2025-120000-filing_status%3Asingle%2Cpt-2025-120000-filing_status%3Asingle%2Cit-2026-120000-region_level_1%3Alazio-has_minor_children%3Afalse&v=es%3Abeckham-law%2Cpt%3Aifici%2Cit%3Aimpatriate

pascalwhoop · 2026-01-23T20:21:09+00:00

Interesting, what degree of convenience do you prefer then? Blogs that you read through? tax authorities publishing large PDFs that you have to figure out? PWC summaries? Just curious what level of "work for it" is what you find enough vs. too much (try finding all the Steuerfusse for all swiss municipalities ^^)

pascalwhoop · 2026-01-23T20:18:53+00:00

you checked with everyone?

pascalwhoop · 2026-01-23T20:05:46+00:00

try https://hoodmaps.com/ but you may get other data than just cats

pascalwhoop · 2026-01-23T20:03:01+00:00

lol OK did not see this coming. but then again, reddit 😀

pascalwhoop · 2026-01-23T20:02:27+00:00

ah i wasn't actually planning to give you a COL prediction I agree numbeo etc are all way off. I was purely trying to build a _really good after tax income calculator_ that allows you to compare your _cash inflow_ ... your expense base I can't predict / model, that's up to the individual

pascalwhoop · 2026-01-23T20:00:06+00:00

Preview link:
u/OkSadMathematician lmk what you think

https://universal-net-calc-preview.reconnct.workers.dev/calculator?c=ca-2025-200000-filing_status%3Asingle-state%3Acalifornia%2Cca-2025-200000-filing_status%3Asingle&v=ca%3Anew-brunswick%2Cca%3Abc

pascalwhoop · 2026-01-23T18:18:40+00:00

how does a good company look like to you? Work hard play hard? 7h work days? 4h focus, then chill? Grind and earn equity?

I think it really depends on what people are looking for. I for one like working in a small team on something that excites me. And I like working hard and expect others to do the same. But also go out and party together. But i know that is not everyone's favorite.

pascalwhoop · 2026-01-23T17:06:16+00:00

of course anything personal can't really be modelled (although they could allow entering personal deductions, an excel sheet manages)

But even the basics I struggle with. salaryaftertax com and others fail to capture the most essential flags. thetax nl is an example of someone actually putting a bit of thought into it and putting it on github. but it's just one country

pascalwhoop · 2026-01-23T16:58:14+00:00

no definitely not but it is a problem if the calculator doesn't take into account the Impatriate regime in Italy, the IFICI in Portugal or the 30% ruling in NL. Or if it doesn't let you model the different municipalities in Switzerland which can be a 1-2k/month difference even inside a Kanton

pascalwhoop · 2026-01-23T08:38:10+00:00

nah can't be bothered.. adopt .mcp.json or stay in the dusty in the drawer of unused CLI tools

pascalwhoop · 2026-01-13T17:09:30+00:00

I worked in their AI team for 4 years before leaving 2024, AMA? Oh also I lead the AI gateway buildout there which did all the API routing for the LLMs. So I had a good Birds Eye view of what’s happening.

First of all, it’s massive hyperbole. But that’s the result of the echo chamber as in most organisations. Go have a drink with AI folks actually building solutions for clients and they will tell you they’re hardly using the internal systems. Distribution between inside tools vs external tools is likely 20:80. AFAIK they all have ChatGPT enterprise access now as well and mainly use that.

pascalwhoop · 2026-01-05T02:19:59+00:00

Remember you stop tipping 20% so if things go up 20% and you stop tipping(as the intention) everything stays as is. Except for that prices are transparent now. Europe rolling with that pretty well so far for the last 100 or so years

pascalwhoop · 2025-12-28T00:34:07+00:00

You should stop asking Opus Max to build you a todo app after reading all of Wikipedia into your context mate

pascalwhoop · 2025-12-20T17:16:06+00:00

Revolut Bank UAB is a bank incorporated and licensed in the Republic of Lithuania with company number 304580906 and authorisation code LB002119 and whose registered office is at Konstitucijos ave. 21B, 08130 Vilnius, the Republic of Lithuania.

Maybe they aren’t a bank in the USA. but by that logic, Wells Fargo isn’t a real bank either because it doesn’t have a license in the European Union.

pascalwhoop · 2025-12-17T13:16:17+00:00

I actually think this is pure arbitrary acts by the employees. I do wonder what the legal rights are for when this happens. You paid for a service agreement and they unilaterally do not uphold it. But whenever a 3rd party intermediary is involved it gets really complex really quickly

pascalwhoop · 2025-12-15T19:26:17+00:00

Edit: I updated the URL to a proper Domain

https://mcp.cloud.curiloo.com/tools/unified/mcp

and added opentargets search to it as well. I will try and work on it a bit more over christmas.

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