Net Pay/Gross Pay
Surely, the whole purpose of this thread is comparative - to give an idea of what different airlines pay. Its interesting to know that if you are a FO on 320's in Germany, you'd get X euros, whereas if you were a FO on 320's in Spain, you'd get Y euros. But to compare, you really need to compare "apples with apples".
So the figures quoted should first be "normalised" - i.e. those that would be paid to the average pilot - so you exclude training cost repayments and anything special that affects you and only you.
Next, they should be gross. Why? Because everybody's tax situation is different - here's just 3 examples -
- you pay less tax if you have a wife and 8 kids than you do if you are a bachelor.
- you pay more tax in the Scandinavian countries than you do in the UK - but you get a better social safety net.
- some countries (the Excited States in particular) allow sizeable interest deductions to reduce taxes.
There are so many variables in individual State's Tax Codes that comparison is not possible - that's why it makes sense to work only of gross figures so a true comparison can be made.
OD