50% effective or marginal? During discussions, only effective is useful. According to the PWC page:

https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/germany/individual/taxes-on-per...

Marginal tax rate is 42% on the first EUR after 278K. That would astonishingly high total income in Germany. There might be some remaining solidarity tax from the reunification, but I cannot see how you get to an effective tax rate of 50% on 100K income, which is considered excellent in Germany.

Can you share a worked example how effective tax rate can be above 50%?

Kinda useless to reply to a throwaway after 5h but let's see

1. Minor mistake. 42% marginal is at 60k~ish, the 278k number is 45% 2. The effective income tax rate around 100k is in the area of 25%. When there's numbers thrown around above 40% they usually include the 19% sales tax, CO2 tax etc. it's a slightly odd number including government induced cost.

VAT is never included in income tax comparisons. So, please tell me: How do you get to 50% effective tax rate in Germany with anything less than a ridiculously high income, like 250K EUR+?