What you actually keep in Germany
| Gross salary | UK resident | Standard rates |
|---|---|---|
| £60,000 | £45,357 | £33,011-£12,346 |
| £100,000 | £68,557 | £50,500-£18,057 |
| £150,000 | £91,286 | £77,961-£13,325 |
| £250,000 | £144,286 | £133,651-£10,635 |
Every figure above is a separate call to the same engine the calculator uses, run at build time on 2026-08-12. The green column is the best available outcome at that income.
The Germany options, priced
- Standard rates. Ordinary German income tax plus solidarity surcharge, with dividends generally under the flat Abgeltungsteuer.
Germany has one regime to model here, which makes the structure and the residency date the only levers that matter.
What actually moves the number
- German dividend taxation is a flat rate rather than the progressive scale, which is why the result is flatter across incomes than you expect.
- Church tax is optional in the sense that it depends on registration, and the engine does not include it.
- Germany has no split-year treatment, so the year of the move is usually taxed on an arrival-date basis by concession rather than by right.
When Germany starts taxing you
A residence available to you in Germany, or a habitual abode of more than six months. Having a flat you could live in is enough, whether or not you are in it.
The other half is the UK side. Leaving the UK tax net is the Statutory Residence Test, and running a UK company from outside the UK raises Central Management and Control and Permanent Establishment questions that are separate from your own residence. Running a UK limited company while living abroad covers both.
What this calculation assumes
- Social security is the weak point in this calculation. The model charges the destination country's employee contributions and drops UK National Insurance the moment residence moves. In practice UK NI often continues for a period after you leave, and which country you contribute to is set by a social security agreement rather than by where you are tax resident. Treat the take-home figure as the optimistic end of the range, and the gap is largest where the destination charges no social security of its own.
- Employer National Insurance is shown as an employer cost, so it is outside your take-home. It does not disappear when you move, and it is often the reason an employer says no.
- Cross-border scenario detected. Check the applicable double-tax treaty between United Kingdom and Germany.
- Single-filer (Grundtarif) bands in taxable space (zvE minus the EUR 12,096 Grundfreibetrag). The 32a EStG progression zones 2 and 3 are CONTINUOUS quadratics, not flat rates, so they are modelled as 8 + 16 piecewise-linear segments whose rate is the exact chord slope -- cumulative tax is exact at every segment boundary and at most ~EUR 4.50 high mid-segment (chord over a convex curve). Zones 4 (42% to zvE 277,825) and 5 (45%) are linear and exact. Employee social security applies SPLIT ceilings: pension+unemployment 10.6% to the EUR 96,600 Beitragsbemessungsgrenze, health+care 10.35% to EUR 66,150. Solidarity surcharge modelled on employment income (5.5% above the EUR 19,950 Freigrenze, 11.9% taper) and already included in the 26.375% dividend rate. Church tax optional; joint filing (Splittingtarif), Gewerbesteuer and family variation not modelled.
- Solidaritaetszuschlag: 5.5% of assessed income tax, charged only where income tax EXCEEDS the 2025 single-filer Freigrenze of EUR 19,950 (EUR 39,900 joint); inside the Milderungszone the charge is capped at 11.9% of the excess until the full 5.5% takes over. Already baked into the 26.375% Abgeltungsteuer dividend rate, so it is not applied to dividends a second time.
The last items are the engine's own disclosures, reproduced rather than summarised. Where a regime is not modelled it is named as not modelled, because a caveat you have to go looking for is not a caveat.