Peter wrote:
Company owners, from a few employees to a few hundred.
At owner level, frankly, many people will do what’s good for the business, even out of their own pocket (private money). So even if the tax office will unjustly tax it as “hidden profit distribution” or “hidden salary”, it serves the business, they do it.
I second Vladimir here, having GA tax deductable even if you are in the aviation business needs a very good financial advisor and tax acrobat. Most companies do not allow the use of anything but public transport, so does my employer for instance and even there, flying is not permitted unless the distance is in excess of 500 km one way. Where Vladimir is based (as well as myself) the tax system is very much trying to maximize inputs and they will simply kill deductions you make at will. You can of course fight that, but the lawyer cost involved will be higher than the actual tax…. so most people relent and some even will stop putting deductions they would be entitled to but know that they will have to fight for them. In Switzerland, there are cantons which would probably do this differently, but Zürich is definitly not the place to try any of this.
As for the subject of this thread: Clearly what is needed is both, time and money, but time is the more precious commodity in most cases. If someone has the money to make the license or even buy an airplane, money is usually not the factor. Time is however, big time (pun intended). For me, the main restricting factors are:
- fixed work schedule often fixed months before. No flexibility whatsoever. Either the weather on THE DAY is suitable or forget it. Same goes for flying vaccations or longer trips, people like this need to be back on the day, otherwise they face severe consequences. I have seen this happen even when airline travel goes pear-shaped.
- family. Whoever has a family with (particularly small) children usually disappears from the social world for 2-5 years and then gradually re-appears once the kids grow up. Personally, I have not flown one minute since my daughter was born for the simple fact that there is no time whatsoever, not only for flying but for anything at all.
Clearly, people who can manage their own time are in a huge advantage. That is why I mostly see retirees or self employed people flying, most of them sigle without kids or with grown kids who don’t care if their inheritance will become available a tad earler or later.
And patients on public healthcare can freely choose their doctors, unlike in the UK
More accurate information on the UK would be a good thing… The systems cannot be compared, and as with so much else mainland Europeans get a very slanted presentation of the UK system in the media, especially nowadays… Germany has an insurance funded system, which is de facto private health care 
Also most Germans (I have a partial “family” living there) pay into this insurance fund. This is very different to the UK NHS, which since 1948 is funded by the general taxpayer and is mostly free at the point of delivery and, for better or for worse (it is a misallocation of taxpayer money to dish out for free what somebody could easily pay for) all politicians since 1948 have made this a pillar of UK politics. Accordingly, health insurance is not that common in the UK, and the “free” NHS is overloaded.
UK consultants (i.e. surgeons and other specialists etc) can choose to work in either or both branches and they get paid similarly very well in both. My younger son just had his tonsils out and the surgeon (private appointment £200, NHS surgery for free, privately would have been £2.9k) said he makes the same whichever way the surgery is done. You can even get private treatment done in an NHS hospital e.g. a stent is 10k (8k to the hospital, 2k to the surgeon, and like a boob job he can do two a day). If you go private in the UK you can choose the consultant, etc. The consultants usually make a lot of money; probably c. 200k-300k which is not bad at all especially if your “family overheads” are well controlled. Even a GP can make 150k although his quality of life is then not great (most of them seem utterly miserable, and the happiest GP here is a lady who works very part-time and is wonderful). Pop into any private hospital car park and it has loads of Aston Martins etc there Keeping the overheads down is obviously crucial to having (a) disposable income and (b) off-work time left for pursuing hobbies, because e.g. 2 kids in private secondary school is >60k and that comes out of your taxed income! Eton probably 2x that.
All that said, we don’t see many of these people in GA for some reason, probably because they are working their balls off and – like the caricature of so many long haul airline pilots – are on their 3rd marriage and a 2nd set of kids If you have one ex wife and 2 kids with her, that is another 30-40k going out just on child maintenance. All out of your taxed income. So 200k will barely cover all that and if you started this adventure at 40 you are finished and done for the rest of your working life. The Aston Martin will probably be one of your cheapest accessories… I do know of just a few who fly. One is a lady surgeon who flies an SR22 around the place and is thus scarce at multiple levels.
Perhaps American doctors make a lot more per hour – some surgery costs I have seen suggest 2x more. That will make a big difference to disposable income and perhaps explains the common caricature in the USA of the flying doctor in his Bonanza.
At owner level, frankly, many people will do what’s good for the business, even out of their own pocket (private money). So even if the tax office will unjustly tax it as “hidden profit distribution” or “hidden salary”, it serves the business, they do it.
I suspect there is diffusion between genuine business travel, and “not really business travel” where the guy got busted by the taxman Every modern country has a “benefit in kind” rule in its tax system, otherwise everybody would set up a bogus business and run their entire household through it. I am sure every country in Europe allows the use of GA for business travel legitimately within the tax system.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
If someone has the money to make the license or even buy an airplane, money is usually not the factor.
Using tips that were mentioned above, an average person living in Switzerland can make PPL without any issue. Making longer trips (say 6-12 hours flight time) a couple of times a year is more difficult in my opinion. Even a one time trip is quite limiting because it would mean using a huge part of your annual budget in several days and then stay on the ground for quite a while, losing currency, experience and confidence.
I wonder if all the long posts in this thread is an indication of lot of time ? 
I think people often have more choices than they think financially – I just turned down a big ‘reunion’ night out in London that would have been great fun, but would have been about £300+ quid with hotel, travel etc so a social life hit but some flying funds recouped.
Flexible working is becoming far more common now (especially in the public sector) and I do it very successfully on my current contract. It may restrict you from the fast stream career climbing, but so many of my friends are literally killing themsleves with stress, hours and commuting that they are welcome to it!
The key bit is to have good health the rest I think is irrelevant.
Peter
I don’t know how you reached this conclusion.
I used to fly 90-100h a year, weekends, during the week after work if weather was good etc. When the cost of flying reached £20k a year I sold. In a funny way, since I sold I have more time to spend together with my wife and do things that we both enjoy rather than things that I enjoy.
I find flying is like having your very own time machine!
1-2hours flying time and it can feel like a whole world away quite surreal to leave on Friday afternoon and be sitting eating alfresco somewhere… in the time it would have taken just to clear security at Heathrow!
Peter, consultants in the NHS are paid up to 180K (there are apparently 116 doctors in the UK who receive awards allowing them to earn this figure) but the top of the normal pay scale is 105,042K
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/16/doctor-earns-740000-year-nhs-gender-gap-revealed/
https://www.bma.org.uk/advice/employment/pay/consultants-pay-england
Salaried GPs earn 54-85K out of which they will have to pay malpractice insurance averaging 8K for full time work. GP partners earn whatever the Daily Mail says they earn minus the costs of employing their receptionists, nursing staff and heating the surgery, not to mention both employee and employer’s contributions on their pensions and 8K+ in indemnity (I’ve heard of people paying 20K if they’ve had enough claims against them). There are a few people who earn huge amounts because they own and administer several GP surgeries. I don’t envy them.
Junior doctors (who may be in their 40s) generally earn less again. https://www.bma.org.uk/advice/employment/pay/juniors-pay-england
There is, as you mention, a prospect of doing private work. Opthalmologists and orthopaedic surgeons sometimes do a fair bit; orthogeriatricians rather less. Living in rural Wales rather than the South East, I don’t know any doctors who do substantial amounts of private work. On the other hand, the costs of living are substantially less, the basic wage is identical, and the air is cleaner. Hangarage is about 1K a year.
Locum work is a different matter again: it can be very well paid if you’re not too tired to take it on. Full time locums can earn hundreds of thousands a year even at quite a junior level, but tend to be the fall-guys when things go wrong – which they do. From my perspective it seems to be precarious and lonely existence – the sort of thing you do if you’re building up a nest-egg to pay for a career change or if you’ve just had a divorce and fancy working in Orkney at short notice.
Are doctors paid too much or too little? I honestly don’t know. But doctors do get paid substantially less than people often assume. Sensible doctors choose not to use their titles, as if people know what they do for a living they pay more to have their houses redecorated.
