Quote:
Originally Posted by SYT_Shadow
Quote:
Originally Posted by W///
That's sure what it looks like. This absolutely kills the manufacturers in terms of who they can sell the car to. The M3/4 IMHO was always the car that was attainable if you work hard enough, not something that only the super wealthy can afford.
What an odd system.
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It's only attainable in a few countries around the world. In most of Europe, if you have an M3 you are a wealthy person.
When your income is half (at most) what it is in the US, then you are taxed ~60% of that, then out of the 40% remaining you still have to pay ~20% VAT plus 70% tax on gasoline, property taxes, etc, well, you're basically living with 30% of your income.
Let's break it out in numbers.
In the US let's say you make 200k/year. In Europe let's assume you can find the same job and you're lucky that it pays you ~50%. Let's say 100k/year.
Taxes take half of that. You have 50k left
VAT takes 20% of that. You have 40k left.
If you want to buy a car there's an additional VAT of ~20%. If you want fuel it's 8/gal. You pay property tax, you pay for private healthcare because the public healthcare is clogged up.
You don't have a lot of money left when all is said and done. |
From personal experience (a Brit engineer living in US for the last 17 yrs, but still working with a lot of UK colleagues), the assumption that European salaries are only 50% of US is a bit of a stretch. In my industry I would say UK salaries are about 25% less than you would get in the US for a comparable position, and some of that delta is then made up through additional fringe benefits, etc. The VAT vs US Sales Tax thing is a big difference though, and the general point is correct...it is harder to afford an M3/4 in Europe than in the US. I can relatively easily afford it right now, but if I was doing the same job for my company but based in the UK, I don't know that I could justify the cost.