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Comment by Matti | Hacker News Reader

Unless things have changed recently, Berlin still has fairly low rents and low living costs going for it -- giving people a fair amount of marginal space: http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html

Alexander Young (of Soundcloud) speaking about Berlin: "The atmosphere and culture in Berlin is very unique. Since the costs for living are still low, people can afford to only work a few hours per week, and do the stuff they want the rest of the time." http://blog.twingly.com/2010/05/18/from-stockholm-to-berlin-...

That can't be said about Stockholm nor Helsinki.

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I agree Berlin is ultra-cheap, but the Nordic capitals are still pretty cheap compared to other startup hubs. When I moved from the US to Copenhagen, people warned me about expensive rents, but I was actually surprised at how much cheaper it is here than in major American cities. I pay about $1400 (€1000) for a centrally located 2bd in a nice area near the metro, which is a kind of price it's totally impossible to find in SF, Boston, or NYC. Not to mention in other startup hubs like London...

But after 50%+ taxes, take home amount is quite low compared to US, right?

This might be a common myth. The tax levels in the nordic countries might be higher than the US but not by that much. We also have free health care and education (university attendance is free) and other benefits included in our taxes.

Earning $100k in Norway you'd pay around 32% tax.

Edit: We have progressive taxes. To pay over 50% taxes in Norway you'd have to have a regular salary above $551k, with no deductibles. Capital gains are taxed at 27%.

There's also 25% VAT, compared to 0%-8% sales tax in the US (varying by state).

I'm not sure why included university attendance is always thrown into the pitch in these conversations -- someone looking for a place to work probably isn't trying to pick up a philosophy degree on the side.

Because if you're not a single 20-something, you might be thinking about saving for your children's education.

Being sited in a country with free university education means that when you're paying your staff, you don't have to assume that they need to be putting away several thousand a year for a college fund.

It would also mean that people who are 20-something and educated locally are less likely to have large student loans to repay too. They would pay more tax compared to the US, but need to spend less money after tax so it should even itself out.

This is not necisarilly true. As a student in Sweden I can explain how our system works.

The university is free for swedes and europeans (might only be free for schengen countries). In Sweden we have a government agency that controlls student loans and subsidies (the agency is called CSN, Central Study Board). As a Swedish citizen you have the right to a ~2000 SEK (around 300 USD) per month subsidy. So just by attending university you get 2k SEK each month (this is limited to I think 12 terms in total, i.e 6 years), this is something you don't have you pay back.

We then also have the right to a student loan which will push up your monthly "earnings" to ~8000 SEK (1200 USD). This loan you obviously have to pay back. The current plan is that every student that took a loan before 2001 have 25 years to repay it.

Students that live at home during the duration of their study time can get away with only taking the subsidy. But most student (at least those that I know, including me) have to take the student loan.

Interesting, that's something that's different in Denmark. The Statens Uddannelsesstøtte (SU) is 5500 DKK (around 1000 USD) per month. You can additionally take loans, but most students don't; they just live within the SU amount, often by living in one of the fairly cheap university dorms. It's getting more common for students to supplement their SU with freelancing or a 1-day-a-week job, though, especially masters students in areas like tech or design.

Regarding Helsinki, ignoring deductions an income of $100,000 (€73,000) would be taxed at 36% with everything included (pension contributions and so forth). You can check yourself at http://prosentti.vero.fi/VPL2013/Sivut/Aloitus.aspx?kieli=en...

Healthcare is basically free (trivial costs for a visit) and that's for everyone with a work permit, no exceptions.

VAT is 24% and food is expensive. Salaries are lower than other big cities but not much and it depends a lot on the exchange rate if making a comparison. When the dollar was getting you €0.63 our salaries looked fine; at €0.73 they look a bit light.

Agreed, but if you're spending 5-10% of your income every month on repaying student loans that has the same effect as a tax. I think the cost of healthcare is a much better example though.

Not so in Helsinki. In Helsinki, $100k would be in the 40% tax bracket. But the problem in Helsinki is the tax bureaucracy; you have to estimate your income for the year, and the tax office gives you a tax rate. Anything above that level gets taxed at an exorbitant amount (>50% for the 100k$ salary). Plus, yes, there's free healthcare in Finland, but it's only really available for you if you're poor (if you're not a citizen). If you make money, you're expected to use your private insurance, which will be covered by the company. Salaries in Helsinki are about 60% of what they are in SF, but costs are about 80-90%.

> you have to estimate your income for the year, and the tax office gives you a tax rate. Anything above that level gets taxed at an exorbitant amount (>50% for the 100k$ salary)

The higher tax rate is a safety mechanism in case you would fall into a tax bracket with a higher percentage. This does not mean you are necessarily taxed at a higher rate; you are just saving in case you earn so much that your tax bracket will change.

If you don't fall into a higher tax bracket, you will get the money back when the tax office checks the numbers afterwards.

This system is in place so that you wouldn't get surprised by huge tax deficit when you fall into a new bracket at the end of the year.

Yes, I had the same thing due to failing to file any kind of form when I first moved to Denmark— they withheld at the top tax rate by default, but then gave me the money back at the end of the year. I didn't have to go through any sort of process to request a refund; it was just automatically deposited in my bank account. They even tacked on 0.5% interest onto the over-withheld amount.

In Finland, your income tax rate only depends on your total yearly income. If you estimate your income too low and too much money gets withheld, it will be returned to you the next year. You can also adjust your estimate at any point during the year.

However, the employer also pays taxes from an employee's salary, bringing the actual tax rate closer to 50% - if not for those taxes, they could play the employee more in the first place.

I pay an overall tax rate around 35-40% in Denmark. A flat 8% of that is for healthcare coverage, which is comparable to the percentage of my salary I paid for healthcare in the U.S., so the "non-healthcare" part is more like ~30%. Which is about what California taxes are like, after you add federal income tax, payroll taxes, and state income tax, so I'm not seeing much of a difference. My disposable income after "necessities" (taxes, healthcare, groceries, transportation, and rent) is a considerably higher percentage of my nominal income, all told— although that part really varies depending on where in the U.S. you live (e.g. Pittsburgh is much cheaper than the Bay Area).

On the other hand, you also pay a flat 25% sales tax on everything, which is... fairly high.

True, but VAT is pretty trivial as a percentage of my overall expenses. Completely swamped by other factors, like the difference in rent, and the fact that the transit is so good I don't have to pay to own/maintain/insure a car. I would guess I spend $500-1000/mo on VAT-applicable goods and services, so we're talking a difference of $80-160/mo compared to CA sales tax.

Americans have a perception that Europeans pay much higher taxes than we do. It's perhaps true in certain countries in certain times for certain kinds of income but generally speaking the rates are quite comparable.

What's worse is: Europeans get way more for their taxes: namely medical which is 18% of the American GDP. In other words even if our taxes were way lower than their's (which they aren't) the medical piece likely would make up for it.

The key reason our taxes are so high compared to their's (I believe) boils down to military spending. I think you can make an argument that America's massive (more than everyone else combined) military spending is benefiting the whole world's stability and in that sense Americans subsidize the whole world through our taxes. But this means our taxes are inherently quite high.

tl;dr BERLIN IS AWESOME!

I just came back from Berlin (awesome couchdb conf @ co.up co-working space) and must say that the energy in a place like Kreuzberg is pretty intense.

The area around Rosenthaler Platz and Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in Mitte also seemed kind of interesting but more akin to what I'm used to here in Vienna (neat and tidy).

I only had five days to experience the city but I do have thought about moving there already!

But yeah living in Vienna is so damn comfortable that it really is a difficult decision to go anywhere else.

We have a lot of co-working spaces too and I often meet local devs at coffee shops by coincidence (another strength of a rather small place). So everything being so nice is both a good and a bad thing I guess.

Vienna #1 at quality of life: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_Quality_of_Living_Survey

Bottom line for me though - the youthful vibes in Berlin are a very special thing and probably worth more than top comfort and beauty.

How necessary would speaking fluent German be to live/work in Berlin or Vienna? I've heard that most young people and tech people speak English, but that it can be a problem, if you don't know good German, to interact with the civil service, banking, business registration, and those kinds of things. But I have no personal experience there.

One thing that makes it easy to stay in Scandinavia is that I've been rather spoiled by how easy it is to do everything in Denmark in English. Official government forms are available in your choice of Danish or English versions, all my banking is in English, doctors all speak it, and every government office I've been to will switch once they realize you're a foreigner. Heck, even many public lectures at universities and museums are in English. The language is good to know for social reasons, but there aren't really any formal/official situations where you have to interact in Danish.

There were certain areas in Berlin where speaking English seemed almost mandatory, especially in Bars and Cafes but that said I don't know how the situation is with gov institutions etc.

I would guess though that it can't be such a big deal as there seemingly are a lot of non German speakers everywhere (in the mentioned areas it felt like German native speakers actually were a minority) and consequently at least some of the local businesses were owned by non Germans too.

Vienna is definitely less pronounced international but telling from my experiences at coffee shops as well as the "Wien" subreddit at least there must be a thriving expat community.

Sorry for not having more info about the official lang requirements in Germany/Berlin but do check out the cities' corresponding subreddits:

http://www.reddit.com/r/berlin http://www.reddit.com/r/wien

Most expats I know here have done well, sometimes 5+ years, without ever properly learning German. So language is not an issue.

That said, you do need help when dealing with the bureaucracy. It can be complicated, and they often do not speak English. But it's trivial to get this help from colleagues or expats.

90% of those I work with are German, and yet I can get by speaking only English as 1) they will switch to English, like I suspect most German developers can and would, and 2) our CTO and a few others in the office are not German either.

Agreed! I moved to Berlin almost two years ago from Amsterdam (not a bad city either!) and I'm still happy to be here. If you're a RoR developer or front-ender needing work and a push to come here, hit me up :).

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