Methodology
This page describes how every figure on this site is produced. It exists so that you do not have to take our word for anything: each number is traceable to a document you can open yourself.
Which sources we use
Visa routes, salary thresholds, application fees and processing times come from the immigration authority of the country concerned. Tax rates, brackets and special regimes for incoming workers come from that country's tax authority or official gazette.
Cost-of-living figures cannot come from a government source, because no government publishes them in a comparable form. Where we use commercial or crowd-sourced data, we say so on the page and name the provider. Such data is always labelled as an estimate, never presented as an official figure.
A non-official source is never the only source under a figure that a government does publish.
What the check date means
Each figure carries the date on which someone last opened the source document and confirmed the figure still matched. That is what the check date means — not the date the page was created, and not the date some unrelated part of the page was edited.
If a figure has not been re-checked recently, the date will say so plainly rather than being hidden. An old date is information, not something to be embarrassed about.
When rules change
Salary thresholds and tax brackets are usually revised once a year, and sometimes mid-year. When a figure changes we update it and keep the previous value, so that the page can show what changed and when.
We do not delete superseded figures. A page that silently swaps one number for another gives you no way to tell whether it has been maintained at all.
Known limits
Currency conversion is indicative. Amounts are shown in the currency of the country concerned, with a conversion for orientation only; rates move daily.
Net-pay calculations model the common case: employment income, standard deductions, no dependants unless stated. They are not a tax return. Personal circumstances — dependants, second incomes, foreign assets, treaty relief — change the outcome and are outside what a general calculator can capture.
Eligibility indicators compare your inputs with published thresholds. Meeting a published threshold is necessary, not sufficient: the decision belongs to the authority, not to this site.
Corrections
If you find a figure that no longer matches its source, tell us and we will fix it. Reports that include the page address and a link to the official document are handled fastest.