Quite. For every country we model one person: single, no children, an ordinary employee, taking only the standard allowances. We add national income tax, a typical regional or municipal tax where one exists (an average US state, Ontario, Zurich, a middling Croatian city), and the employee's share of mandatory social contributions. Employer contributions, church taxes, wealth taxes, tax-free bonuses, mortgage deductions and every clever accountant are left out. Rates are the 2026 schedules as they stood in October 2026, simplified into a few brackets where the real thing has twenty.

Your payslip knows your real situation; we don't. Partners, kids, pensions, benefits in kind, 13th months and local quirks move the number by thousands. Treat each result as "within a few percentage points of a typical person", which is enough for perspective and useless for filing.

We convert your gross pay into the other country's currency at an approximate exchange rate (fixed in the page, dated 15 October 2026) and run it through that country's rules. We do not adjust for cost of living, so a Swiss salary looks lightly taxed and a Bulgarian one looks heavily paid. Both are a bit misleading. Both are also fun.

No. Net worth isn't income. Most of a billionaire's fortune is shares that are taxed only when sold, usually at lower capital-gains rates, and often not at all if borrowed against instead. The "5% return" mode is a generous guess at what the fortune might earn in a year; the "cashed out" mode is pure fantasy. In real life, estimates put the effective tax rates of the ultra-rich in the low single digits. That gap is the perspective.

• Tax rules: each country's 2026 personal income tax schedule and social security rates as in force in October 2026, checked against PwC's Worldwide Tax Summaries and the national tax authorities, simplified by hand.
• Fortunes: Forbes real-time billionaire rankings as republished by Beinsure, 2 October 2026. They move by billions a day; we don't.
• Exchange rates: mid-market rates for 15 October 2026, as published by exchangerate-api.com and cross-checked against a second feed.
• "Typical wage" prefills: rough full-time averages, used only as a starting point.

No. Everything is calculated in your browser. Your country and income are remembered on this device only, so the page opens where you left it.