The last time I paid wages was almost two decades ago now, but at the time, in Finland, the employer costs were about 38% to 40% on top of the employee salary. However, if the company was profitable without debt, then to be able to pay that salary, the company had to make enough income to cover VAT for all that. At the time, it rose from 22% to 24% IIRC. So, to be able to pay
x in wages, one had to charge at minimum 1.5
x for that work, and that excludes all overhead of running the company.
For larger companies, the employer costs were even higher, but they offset the costs by incorporating in e.g. Ireland, and paying concern debt and fees, so that the subsidiary in Finland was all the time in the negative profit.
Funnily enough, the most profitable business model here is to buy cheap and sell high, without changing anything. You only have to pay VAT for the difference, and at least here, companies typically pay much more than private customers for the exact same product or service: poor quality is not an issue, if you change your trade name every two to three years. In the IT sector here, therefore, the most profitable model was to have your tender writers and salesmen in Finland, but all production in a cheaper country, with a parent corporation in Ireland or similar, to which the Finnish subsidiary is in debt and paying concern fees.
No wonder the country is becoming a banana republic, when
producing anything useful is taxed way heavier than just buying and selling imported crap. Basically, the Finnish system punishes for selling work, and rewards trading imported crap.