Which Countries Allow Workers To Take Home The Most Money After Taxes?

As the US moves toward the long-awaited post-COVID reopening, millions of Americans have been pondering the future of work, and how the year of remote work for white collar workers will impact patterns of migration across the US, and perhaps the world. Just the other day, the Wall Street Journal published a lengthy weekend-edition feature about “Zoom Towns”.

In the piece, the reporter cited secondary cities like Miami, Austin, Charlotte, Nashville and Denver enjoy a price advantage over more expensive cities like New York and San Francisco. But it also pointed to smaller cities like Gilbert, Ariz., Boulder, Colo., Bentonville, Ark., and Tulsa, Okla.

But what if we also saw “Zoom Countries” develop?

Now that President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus bill has been passed and the first wave of ‘stimmies’ have landed, the administration is already prepping the public to see higher taxes in the first federal tax hike since 1993, which is reportedly being considered to pay for Biden’s big-government agenda.

Now that the reopening is near, Bloomberg is once again pondering why Wall Streeters have been migrating from high-tax states like New York and California to lower-tax jurisdictions like Florida (even though Bloomberg just got finished telling everybody that the exodus to Florida was about to slam into reverse).

A Florida resident earning $695,250 a year gets to keep $684,379 pounds, compared with $416,199 pounds for a New Yorker and $434,589 pounds for a Californian.

But in the age of 5G, remote workers aren’t limited to just the US, at least, in theory: they can travel anywhere they’d like. So, which countries are the most hospitable for American workers on an income-tax basis? Remember, Americans are some of the only people who must pay federal income taxes on their earnings no matter where they earn it.

The data also included some insightful findings about how high tax rates affect real incomes. For example, highly paid British workers actually earn less than their counterparts in either Germany or Spain.

The chart below features data from PriceWaterhouseCoopers:

Source: Bloomberg

As politicians like Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez push wealth taxes as part of their agenda for both New York State and the US federal government, don’t think wealthy people aren’t weighing their options.