If you’re deciding where to live and build over the next decade, taxes, social contributions, and real-estate costs matter—a lot. This toolkit gives you a clear, apples-to-apples comparison across countries using a compact grading table (A–F) by tax type, plus a simple way to add new countries—two at a time—via a ready-made prompt.
Below is a quick tour of what’s inside, how to use it, and how to extend it beyond Europe.
WHAT’S IN THE TOOLKIT
- Tax Data Table (Excel): The master table with comparable fields (income tax, social contributions, dividend tax, capital-gains tax on shares, wealth tax, inheritance, and real estate transfer/annual). Each column has a letter grade and notes so you can skim fast and dive when needed.
- Tax Grading Rubric (Excel): Transparent thresholds that drive the A–F grades (including the rule that multiple D/F grades cap the overall score). You can tune thresholds as your view evolves.
- Notes & Sources (Excel): Citations and assumptions, so you can audit the numbers or swap in alternatives.
- “Add Countries” Prompt (DOCX): Paste-ready instructions that fetch official rates for two countries at a time, compute grades with your current rubric, and append them to the table.
Why this matters: The grading table compresses a messy landscape into a single glance. You can instantly see, for example, where social contributions are the real drag even if top marginal income tax looks fine—or where capital taxes overwhelm otherwise attractive regimes.
Current scope (and how to go global)
The starter dataset is Euro-centric. That’s deliberate: it keeps the initial comparison tight and credible.
Want to explore Central America, Asia, the Caribbean, or elsewhere? Use the Add Countries prompt to bring in two new countries per run—with sources, notes, and grades that line up with the existing table.
Quick start: compare and extend
- Open the Tax Data Table.
Scan the letter grades by country and tax type. The Overall grade is bounded by a conservative rule: if a country has two or more D/Fs in core categories (Income, Capital, Social, Wealth, Inheritance), it can’t score above a B overall. - Skim the Notes column.
Flags things like territorial/remittance systems, caps on social contributions, surcharges, or municipal quirksin property taxes. - Add your countries (two at a time). Open the Add Countries prompt (DOCX) and set COUNTRY_A and COUNTRY_B. Run it to:
- Pull current statutory/default rates from official or Big-4 sources.
- Apply your Tax Grading Rubric automatically.
- Append both rows to the master table with sources and assumptions logged.
- Iterate with your own assumptions.
Want a different worker profile or investment baseline? Change the inputs (e.g., salary level, dividend yield, realized gains) and re-run. The design encourages what-if exploration.
What the grades capture
- Income (personal): Focused on statutory top rates and typical brackets that touch a mid-to-upper-middle professional over time.
- Social Contributions (employee): A frequent blind spot; the table does not underweightthese. Caps are noted.
- Capital (dividends & share gains at the personal level): Corporate stack is ignored unless it materially alters personal tax.
- Wealth & Inheritance: Wealth tax presence is penalized; inheritance assumes spouse/children baseline and notes harsher cases separately.
- Real Estate: Two numbers—Transfer (on purchase) and Annual (representative city, base specified)—roll into a 10-year burden with a clear RE Grade band.
Why “two at a time”?
Adding countries in pairs keeps the process controlled and auditable:
You’ll see exactly what was fetched, when, and from where.
You can pause, verify sources, and adjust rubric thresholds before expanding further.
Suggested workflows
Career launch / remote worker: Filter for low combined income + social and neutral/low capital taxes. Use the real-estate columns to sanity-check housing friction over 10 years.
Investor lens: Start with capital grades, then look at wealth and inheritance rules that can erode long-term compounding.
Property-anchored plan: Compare RE Transfer + Annual 10-year burdens across candidate cities to avoid death-by-a-thousand-cuts on housing.
Important disclaimer (read me)
This is a decision-support tool, not legal or tax advice.
To keep the dataset manageable—and the comparisons meaningful—we use standardized assumptions and default statutory rates. Local surcharges, allowances, caps, municipal rules, treaty effects, and special regimes can change effective outcomes. Laws change. Always verify before acting.
We encourage you to:
- Run the prompt to add your countries with fresh sources.
- Adjust inputs (salary, yield, realized gains) to match your reality.
- Use an LLM to explore what-ifs, rewrite assumptions, and stress-test conclusions—then iterate the table.
What to do if something looks “off”
- Check the Notes & Sources tab for the country.
- Re-run the Add Countries prompt and confirm date-stamped sources.
- If your situation depends on a special regime (e.g., NHR, flat-tax, remittance basis), treat it as a mitigation and document it separately from the main table’s default grades.
FINAL THOUGHT
The point isn’t to memorize rates—it’s to see patterns fast and to experiment with your own inputs. The grading table shows you where the real drag lives; the prompt lets you expand the map, two countries at a time, wherever your life might go next.