Average tax rate
Total tax divided by gross salary.
All stylised schedules are calibrated to the current Irish model at €60,000.
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Tax Philosophy - Interactive Comparison
Tax Schedule Comparison
Compare eight ways of turning gross salary into tax, take-home pay, and working time. The stylised schedules are calibrated to the current Irish model at a €60,000 salary.
Status Quo
25.2%
A single PAYE employee on €60,000 pays about €15,143 in PAYE, USC, and PRSI in this model.
I tuned the other tax schedules so that each reaches 25.2% at €60,000. I chose this to allow rough comparison to the current Irish-tax status quo.
The chart is a shape explorer, not a full-population revenue forecast. It compares how different fairness rules distribute the burden across salaries after they are anchored to the same benchmark taxpayer.
Current Irish rates
PAYE income tax, USC, and employee PRSI using the site's 2026 assumptions.
Equal absolute contribution
Everyone pays the same euro amount under the selected calibration.
Flat percentage
Everyone pays the same average and marginal percentage.
Protected minimum
The first EUR20,000 is untaxed; income above that faces a flat rate.
Negative income tax
Everyone is guaranteed a minimum income. If earnings are too low, the tax number turns negative and tops them up.
Equal purchase time
For a given purchase, everyone contributes the same amount of working time to the state.
Its average tax rate reaches 50% at a salary of €178,000. With 37.5 working hours a week for 52 weeks (117,000 minutes a year), one gross minute at that salary buys about €1.52.
Income compression
Net income grows with gross income, but only with elasticity alpha = 0.8.