Hi everyone, this is my first post. Although I have seen every possible post about salaries, taxes, etc etc, I haven't found anybody in my position.
I was offered a 16880 CHF/year salary as a postdoc at EPFL, to be complemented with 66321 CHF/year by an EMBO fellowship. That adds up to roughly 83000CHF/year, i.e. 6900 CHF/month.
The big question is, how much can I expect to really take home?
Your EMBO is probably free from tax and social security contributions but you need to ask your personnel office. If you pay only tax & social security contributions on the EPFL part you will likely be taking home almost everything as both tax and contributions will be low (they are a percentage).
I am a post doc at EPFL and the amount of taxes taken out from the paycheck, called "impôt à la source" is equal to about 15%. In other words 85% of the total salary is deposited into my bank account. Remember, when you are thinking of living expenses, that there are other costs like health insurance, rent, etc. I hope that helps and good luck.
Out of the 85% you need to pay your manditory private insurance (health insurance - somewhat expensive & mandatory fire insurance from ECA - very cheap) - plus any other expenses you choose (ie: personal liability insurance, living expenses etc etc). Your health insurance costs can vary depending on the coverage you pick. Use Comparis.ch to get a sense of this cost.
This is based on my experience at the ETHZ, so there may be some differences, but regarding the tax issue:
Your EMBO fellowship doesn't pay the full rate of that the EPFL pays postdocs (which was 81,100 CHF in 2011)-hence the supplementary income, which is 20% of the total salary. Because postdocs are paid at a set rate, you should get a contract that says 20% (although you are working 100%) so that the salary makes sense.
EMBO is tax free (unless you are American) However, I would seriously advise you to have EMBO pay the fellowship to your employer and have it returned as part of a 100% contract to you. This is because the pillar 2 employer and employee mandatory contributions are based on the salary in your contract. This is a significant part of your 15% and there are matching funds from your employer. You'll also get less of a family allowance if you're working less than 50%.
I chose the cheapest health insurance possible (with a maximum 2500 CHF deductible) and the cheapest ECA insurance possible. Health insurance costs ~240 CHF per month and the ECA is ~11 CHF per month. As a US citizen, I do not have to pay US income tax because I make less than $95,100.
If you are non-Swiss, you should consider these special insurance for foreigners in place of the Swiss health insurance. They insure the same thing (LAMAL), but at 85CHF per month with 500 deductible instead of 240CHF with 2500 CHF deductible. That is a lot of savings, and the only qualification is that you're a non-Swiss person working for EPFL for less than 5 years.
I' about to get a post-doc salary offer from EPFL. From ACIDE web page ( http://acide.epfl.ch/ResearchersSalary ) I got the impression that the salary is not negotiable. Is that the case?
List on the ACIDE web page implies that preset salaries are changing from one year to the next. Does anyone know what is the current standard postdoc salary?
Yes, salaries are non-negotiable. Make sure your contract is 100%. Also, at the ETHZ, salary level is by years of experience, so if you've already had some postdoc training, this also counts and you'd be paid a higher salary (I'm not sure how EFPL does this).
As for the salary, are you getting the same salary as ETH Zurich? If so, I will dig up my latest contract, which comes with a copy of the postdoc payscale. Otherwise, you'll need to ask someone who has access to the EPFL internal site. As for a ballpark, it looks like starting salary in 2011 was set to 81,100 CHF, so it would be a bit higher than that.
Just got an offer for 81,400CHF. I do have two years experience as a postdoc, but I find it hard to believe that the increase is only 150CHF per year of experience. You can hardly buy a return train ticket from Lausanne to Zurich for that pittance. Also, it would be strange that minimum salary went up only 300CHF from 2011 till 2014.
In any case, I'll try to see if they made a mistake. Thanks for the information.
Sorry I can't help more-your salary scale is not the same as ETHZ. As for the years of experience, be aware that some group leaders may be either unaware or unwilling to count experience at other places, so tread carefully...
Hi tmile77. I will go to EPFL as a postdoc too. I have 1.5y experience, and they offer me over 87K a year. I guess they rounded up my experience to 2 years and added 3000 for each year. I think it depends on your boss/supervisor, who wants to count your experience or not. My experience was in the US though.