Taxes on your salary, + VAT, + rest of taxes you pay for owning a car, a house, + taxes on petrol, etc amounts to at least half your salary in most European countries.
In most European countries you'd have to earn far above average to approach that. Have a look at the tables in OECD's Taxing Wages publications. Having earned far above average in several European countries, I've never paid more than half, despite for part of the time earning 5x+ the national average.
That's not to say you can't. Some certainly do. And some countries are much higher. Belgium in the very significant outlier, with Germany not far behind.
