Salary discussions – numbers are before or after taxes?

Gross = before expenses/taxes. Net = after (which, specifically, depends on the context).

Always negotiate your compensation in gross. Always negotiate hourly in hours, salary in years or months (most places prefer the former, but depending on your country it might be customary to discuss in the latter). A multiplication/division by 12 is usually sufficient.

Hourly pay means you work time, you get paid for exactly that time (give or take 15 minutes sometimes, usually it's rounded, often up to the next hour). Payments usually made every two weeks or every month.

Salaries are paid at a fixed frequency, usually monthly - sometimes, in very very rare cases, semiannually or even annually. Don't bother asking for a different pay schedule as it's generally company-wide and very difficult to change, and it also shouldn't affect you if you manage your own money correctly - the amount of money you make on average over time remains the same.

The reason for gross is, as you mention, taxes. Your specific situation affects how much you contribute to your community/country (via taxes), and the percentage/amount usually changes over time as your living situation changes (you get married, have children, get a raise, etc).

Your employer can't possibly know all of this in most cases (namely in the US, but also elsewhere) and also it's not their burden to manage your taxes (again, usually - namely in the US).

Your job is "I do services, you pay me for those services". The company needs to know how much they're paying for your services. How that income breaks down for you is your own deal.

Imagine a case where you're in a high tax bracket because you have a lot of successful side gigs. Your employer, paying net, would thus have to pay you more in order to keep the rate competitive for you, simply because you make more elsewhere. The employer loses out pretty heavily in this case. Just doesn't make much sense to do it that way.

Always pre tax.

Everything depends on the person. For example the same 2 people can make exactly the same, but live in 2 different states.

And with state income tax is varying from 10% all the way down to 0%, this choice of locale can make a big difference

I know in Estonia, it is always after taxes, since tax laws are sufficiently simple that people pay the same percentage.

In Denmark it's always pre-tax, because tax laws are so complicated that not even the tax authority knows how much you'll end up paying, and so we have an "adjustment" after the fact where you'll either get to pay an amount more, or get an amount back.. It's hilariously sad.

People quote pre-tax salaries. The after-tax salary depends not only on the taxing jurisdiction but on the spouse's income if any, since that affects the marginal tax bracket.

In Germany you negotiate the "gross" salary. But certain mandatory insurance payments (healthcare, unemployment, retirement, nursing) are split between employee (subtracted from gross) and employer (added to gross). So the direct cost to the employer is about 20% higher than the "gross" salary.

Whenever after-tax income is discussed, I've seen it clarified as "take-home". If that's not mentioned, then assume salary is gross. This isn't a US-centric thing -- I've never heard of anyone discussing after-tax income as "salary" in the UK, for example.

Always before, but you should also factor in local taxes and cost of living yourself when evaluating an offer.

Taxes are too variable from person to person, so when I talk salary, I talk gross, and in my head I know about what my tax rate will be and I figure accordingly.

Generally before tax, especially in the context of annual salary. When talking about post-tax pay (“take home pay”) the convention in my country at least is to express that in weekly or fortnightly terms.

For salary in my country (Australia) though, the figure usually doesn’t include superannuation (payments into a kind of third party pension fund) which is applied on top (legislated as a compulsory 10% on top of the wage).

Salary discussions are before taxes because your tax situation is highly personal in the US. I just ran some numbers

An unmarried person making $150,000 In San Francisco would pay $37,816 in taxes for a net income of $112,184.

If that same person was married with a non-working spouse the same person would pay only $29,836 in taxes for a net income of $120,164.

This person could also legally reduce their tax burden by contributing to retirement accounts. Let's take the married San Franciscan if they maxed out their 401k contributions they'd pay $25,546 in taxes for a net income of $124,454. If they moved to Texas then they'd pay $25,546 in taxes, or a net of $124,454

Those are just no frills situations with standard deduction, employees can have itemized deductions that reduce their tax burden more.

Calculations come from https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes

Here, it'll almost always be pre-tax; it's primarily a US-oriented site, and the US has a very complex personal tax regime (in particular, many, many common deductions) where two people with the same pre-tax income might commonly have a very different post-tax income.

In the US it's always pre tax and generally annual whereas in Europe it's often post tax and monthly in many cases.

I respect the European model but the US model is not going away since taxes are situation dependent and culturally folks have a different attitude about taxes

In Spain, gross is pre-tax and pre-social security (health, unemployement and retirement) but only for the employee side.

The employer needs to pay an additional 25-30% on top of the gross salary for social security benefits but that amount is not included in the gross salary figure.

I am an American so I am used to gross. But I am working in the Balkans and I’ve learned that net salary is more commonly discussed here.

In Switzerland you would only discuss pre-taxes (gross) salaries, (also) because there's an arcane tax system muddling things up.

Gross, always before taxes in Canada at least. Taxes vary by province, less confusing to not include any deductions.

Always pre-tax. (Gross)

There's far too many tax variables to discuss salaries at net level.

It’s before taxes and it’s typically total comp: base + bonus + equity

In Sweden: Pre-tax.