Tax in Denmark is also very high (I keep ~50% of my salary) but there are a huge influx of graduates from around Europe because there are plenty of jobs, it's a very fair society, it's so comfortable to live here, English is widely spoken, and if you stick it out long enough to have kids you'll reap some of your taxed kroner back!

Salary is important, but there are many other factors (at least, among my non-Danish friends).

In Denmark, there's a special tax bracket for expats, where you pay only about 33% of your salary (instead of the standard 50+%), I think you're eglibigle to use it for up to five years.

Yeah, but you need to earn over ~600k DKK per year to qualify, IIRC. That’s around 80k Euros, which is what you might earn after 5-10 years in tech here.

After visiting Copenhagen I'm shocked to find Danish salaries are that low...If you pay 50% taxes I can't imagine living on €40k/y with Copenhagen prices.

You certainly don't move to Copenhagen long term to make money. You come for the quality of life! The accumulation of wealth is just not as big of a deal here as it is in the UK or the US. Most people trust the state to take care of them should they need help, and people generally trust each other to contribute to the economy if they are fit and able.

If you're coming from North America I might add that you are legally entitled to 5 weeks of paid vacation a year. Many people get 6. That doesn't include public holidays (~11 pa). New parents have some of the best treatment in the world, you're paid to study, homelessness and crime are ridiculously low, it has one of the world's best infrastructure for cycling, etc.

There's a joke Danes make that you know you're becoming Danish when you enjoy paying your taxes. With such a well run society you can certainly see why.

Well I live in Berlin on similar salaries but the costs here are half of what I've seen in Copenhagen.

I can't imagine a comfortable middle-class life in Berlin on half of what I make.

You're right, the cost of living in Copenhagen is very high. Rent is among the European top 10 and food quality/price is abysmal. Then again, Berlin is a little anomalous in how cheap it is, don't you think?

Let me rephrase...you were saying €80k gross (=€40k net) is normal for a developer with 5-10 years experience. I assume that the average person is earning a lot less than a dev with 5-10 years of experience.

And €40k is already not exactly living it large in a city with much lower costs of living, I can't imagine how it would be beyond working-poor for somewhere like Copenhagen. Let alone the much lower amount that the average person in Copenhagen would earn.

Yeah, I don’t know how the average earner does it. I’ve heard the average wage is around 40k Euros a year, and AFAIK there aren’t big tax reductions for lower earners. I’ve also heard that Danes are up to their eyeballs in personal debt, so... maybe not the fairytale country in all aspects

What is your estimate on how many of the Danish own land? Do people anticipate price of it growing faster than salaries in the near future?

Most Danes buy property in their 20s and 30s, usually with help from their parents. It helps that mortgage rates are still very low too. There's not as much of a renting culture as there is in say, Germany.

In the Copenhagen area property prices are already growing faster than salaries. Apartments in my relatively central area have gone up by over 20% in the last 3 years. I'm not sure what the situation is like in smaller cities across Denmark, but probably not as severe. It's widely recognised that Copenhagen has the lion's share of the best jobs in the country, but there are efforts to remedy that (not least the government's rash decision to move many important offices to other parts of the country).

  In the Copenhagen area property prices are already growing faster than salaries.

Yeah, that's what worries me - landowners having earned enough wealth will start to use their land for other purposes. Or there will be other wealthy people who will order such a reassignment. Thus increasing prices faster than technology can increase supply. It seems unlikely, but who knows for sure? Thanks for the info!

There are some quite strong laws in Denmark about the foreign ownership of land, and tax starts to ramp up quite quickly as soon as you purchase a second property. People don't tend to put their earnings into multiple properties like they do in, say, the UK (where I'm from).

I haven't read much into the property market here but I would guess the rapid increases in prices is down to increased demand from people moving here, rather than land owners re-purposing their property. I could be wrong though :)

High salary in Belgium? I'm from Belgium and pretty much every neighboring country beats Belgium wrt salary (tech sector)