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Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

understandable, FWIW since I have numbers on these things from working in multiple companies it might be nice to map out where those extras actually go for other readers:

$500/mo for seat licensing (for developers) this includes: Git hosting/Copilot/Office Suit/IDE's/Figma/Slack etc;

$500-$1500/mo for office space (depends a lot, in my company a seat costs me $500/mo and I'm in the middle of the city- larger companies may pay even less but lets assume a very high cost since it's a tech company).

$50/m for preventative healthcare (friskvard in sweden; this is actually higher than the maximum tax-free value)

$100/m for non-preventative health insurance (IE; private healthcare)

$120~/m amortised cost of laptops (assuming $4000 macbook over 3 years and a screen amortised over 5)

5% monthly salary for pension, so, that varies a lot.

But it roughly aligns with your $30k p.a

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Payroll tax is missing from this listing - for Sweden this is 31.42% in the normal case.

No, payroll tax is always included in salary numbers because the tax is _drawn_ from the salary, not added on top of it. In Sweden they always use gross numbers for salaries.

Yes, we use gross numbers for salaries but the gross salary value does not include social contributions, payroll taxes/fees paid directly to the government, the gross amount is just before income taxes. There are quite a few extras on top of the gross advertised salary which the company pays for and we employees don't even know about (it's not shown in payslips).

Given that the Glass Door numbers are the gross value including reimbursements and taxes… What exactly is your point here?

Glassdoor numbers will be gross of income tax, but not include employer social security contributions, which is 31.24% on top of what you see as listed gross salaries. That is his point.

Don't forget if you're doing back-of-the-envelope stuff that there is also 20.6% corporate tax on revenue that has originated in Sweden. And companies resident in Sweden are taxed on their worldwide income, although if they are taxed elsewhere then this elsewhere amount can be deducted. But this means you are paying at least that amount. I imagine some chunk of Spotify's workforce exists to optimise and figure out all of that, given the number of legislatures and tax environments they have subscribers in.

My point is that Swedish employees who input data into Glassdoor will have no idea about the extra social contributions, work insurances, and taxes paid by the employer that aren't available in your payslip. A payslip here only includes the gross salary without those add-ons, and so you aren't aware that your employer is paying some 50-70% on top of the gross salary you see in the payslip.

Maybe I've misunderstood what the parent comment meant so correct me if I'm wrong.

Payroll tax is paid by the employer, as opposed to income tax which is paid by the employee. Anyone disclosing their salary in Sweden will give their pre-income tax salary, payroll tax not included.

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