Real salary - PhD - HORIZON-MSCA-2021

You can find real information on the excel file I host here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lAvl4xhUmzU8c9fCGDx7cFM2PQUT1Je-/edit#gid=1210481379
Best wishes

Hi Gerardo,

Are you by a chance employed by Palacky University Olomouc? If so, I have experience that they were trying to apply rules that had been cancelled two years before the pertinent time period, including before the disbursement of my grant, in order to keep money that did not belong to them (and they outright lied to me about this, and bullied me to keep quiet after I had found out the truth). Although in my case, a different mechanism was included.

In your case, your numbers look as if your employer was withholding an amount they are no longer entitled to withhold since the beginning of the year 2021. Until 2021, the employer was indeed withholding 24,8 % on social insurance and 9 % on health insurance, and only what remained after that was the gross salary (from which further withholding was made). However, this no longer applies, therefore the employer no longer has any such expenses. Since the begining of 2021, the whole monthly amount of your grant should be your gross salary. Only then - from that amount only 6,5 % goes to social insurance and 4,5 % to health insurance. A percentage of the gross salary also goes to income taxes, but since the beginning of 2021, there is no reason to withhold anything from the total wages and call only the rest "gross salary"; that whole monthly wages amount should be your "gross salary". If you speak good Czech, you can use this article to understand the situation before and after the begining of 2021, and also to try and count what you should really be getting: https://www.mesec.cz/danovy-portal/dan-z-prijmu/superhruba-mzda/. However, to have the real information, you may wish to contact an external accountant (there are many working independently; in any case, it does not help to ask at your university, at least at my university they would not disclose the correct information).

Also, I think you should ask the EC whether or not anything is supposed to be deducted from your mobility allowance. And, after all, the EC - MSCA may also have information regarding how the salary of other postdocs at other Czech universities is calculated. And you really need info regarding current MSCA fellows, because those alumni who were receiving wages before 2021 were in the previous situation (where the total wages were indeed higher than the gross salary, because back then the employer had these extra insurance expenses), which no longer applies, however.

Although if you are employed by Palacky University Olomouc, anything at all can happen there (as far as fraud, grant funding mismanagement, employees bullying, signatures fansification, and breaking the employment laws is concerned). In previous experience, they felt free to make their own rules regarding the disbursement of external funding, even if these were in direct contradiction with the wishes of the funder. And they felt free to claim anything about their own rules, and even lie about how they spent the funding, because they knew the Czech funding bodies had no capacity/power, or perhaps really no will, to check and enforce the really applicable rules. But your funder is directly the EC, correct? Then - for the benefit of "further generations" as well as you own fair treatment - you shoudl really inform the EC what is happening, because the EC should have the capacity/power AND will to check on the relevant practices at Czech institutions. Otherwise, if no-one checks from the EU level either (while it seems that Czech institutions/funders do not realy care), the Czech universities increasingly rely on being able to do anything for their own benefit (as opposed ot the benefit of the research and the researcher). 

Please let me know also what you find, and I most importantly hope you can establish a good situation for yourself in one way or another,

Antonie