He asked what I was making now. I fibbed. "About 10% less than that" i said.
I would strongly recommend against doing this, for the simple reason that they will need to know your last salary so they can calculate your tax. In the UK this is the P45 form: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P45_%28tax%29 If you have lied to them, they can terminate you immediately.
That's insane. I would never want to work in a country with laws like that.
Market rate is based on what something worth, not what it costs or what it previously cost so there is no reason for a company to need to know what you previously made.
Having said that, couldn't you just change your terminology and say "package" instead of "salary", then if there is a discrepancy you could say "well, a portion of the package was year end bonus which I obviously didn't get this year..."
I agree with not getting caught in a lie. Personally I don't like the lie approach, even if I can't be caught because it forces me to remember two sides: the truth and what I've told people.
I think the take away here is that you shouldn't be discussing previous salary in any case. If I'm asked I always say "I'm not at liberty to discuss contract conditions at my previous employer" or something to that effect. As I mentioned: as a free market entity, I should be getting what I'm worth now, not some variation of what I was worth 2 years ago when I last tested the market.
I would strongly recommend against doing this, for the simple reason that they will need to know your last salary so they can calculate your tax. In the UK this is the P45 form: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P45_%28tax%29 If you have lied to them, they can terminate you immediately.