This is true. I was also amazed to find in Romania that the salaries quoted are 'net' by default. I don't know of any other country that does this.

Croatia is a very special case. The salaries are quoted as "neto" (net), but the taxes are actually quite complicated. There is a so-called "bruto" (gross) figure, which is the formal one (e.g. it's used for employment contracts) and includes taxes - _just not all of them!_ So the actual amount that a company pays for an employee is the unofficial so-called "bruto 2", which includes some taxes that are calculated based on the "bruto" amount, meaning that it taxes the taxes.

The most commonly used salary calculator [0] does a good job of taking all of that into account, so you can clearly see all three actual figures.

[0] https://www.moj-posao.net/Salary-Calculator/

You can negotiate your net salary in graduated tax regimes as well. The math isn’t as clean, but as long as the tax calculation is deterministic, you can negotiate a salary so that you get a nice round number in your bank account every month.

For some reason this isn’t common practice. I’ve always found it weird that salaries are quoted in gross amount.

In some cases the round number may not be the “net” amount because eg maybe you have some rental income, or income from last year, moved to a new state, etc. But in most cases it’ll be pretty close.