Germany tax is up to 42% scalling linearly from 10k to 58 k Eur.
Polish B2B has tax of 12%.
Comparing capitals, Berlin is 28.3% more expensive than Warsaw (including rent).
Average salaries are estimated like this: 65125 EUR Germany (38358 after all taxes) 25200 EUR Poland (17207 after all taxes)
You earn 122% more in Germany.
Minus cost of living it’s 95% So it’s 2x more
One more thing to consider is buying apartment prices, which are 41% cheaper in Warsaw (outside of city center) and 33.5% cheaper in city center.
So Is it worth moving for some poeple? Definetely, you were right. But person from Poland probably usually will get below average earnings there. Aside from that, person earning top 20% it earnings in Poland would be still taxed 12% when in German all of this goes to 42%. So for top of a line IT specialists this difference is smaller.
Is it as bad as you paint it? No, it’s barely 2x, not close to 3x.
Is it worth moving for me? Hell no, because I work remotely from small city in Poland which is 49% cheaper than Berlin and property prices are dirt cheap.
Numbers are taken from numbeo for costs of living and property prices. Salaries average are taken from online sources, and calculation of taxes was made by online calculators taking into consideration Healthcare etc.
I took normal employment contract values for Germany, because I heard from German coworkers this is the most common and preferred by employers there.
Besides all of that, when you are already earning top 85-90% salaries in the country, it depends a lot on the person if they even need more money. Programmers in Poland can afford anything they want that is not multi-milioneere stuff like yachts or very expensive cars. So why would you leave everyone and everything and move? It makes way more sense to move for people that do not earn a lot of money to Poland.