Brit expat bankers set to make millions more in Europe

If there’s one group of workers who won’t be voting Remain should a second Brexit referendum become a reality, it’s the British bankers now heading for massive salary increases and tax breaks in Europe.

Foreign governments have opened their bank vaults to welcome the best of the British banking and investment sector to their lands of milk, honey and millionaire-style wage packets. In Italy and France alone, highly-skilled financial service sector professionals can expect to keep an average of $200,000 more of their salaries every year due to tax perks. Some 500,000 City jobs have been uprooted and moved overseas since June 2016, with more set to go after Brexit kicks in.

Dublin, Frankfurt, Milan, Paris and Luxembourg are gearing up to welcome the new arrivals in their thousands by gilding the salary lily in a more extravagant manner than ever seen before. Local talent brought in to back up the experts will also get a higher income, boosting tax revenues and encouraging uncontrolled shopaholicism. France and Italy are casting the largest lures in order to reel in top talent from across the financial sector, with bankers who earned a million gross every year and took home just €542,869 now benefiting from tax breaks enabling them to earn over €200,000 more a year for the first five years. Income improvements in other European hubs include €180,000 a year for eight years in France and €100,000 extra for five years in the Netherlands, with Ireland and Spain not far behind.

Surprisingly, Germany has refused to take part in this auction of UK financial talent. The downside is that, after the stated periods of time, a more normal government attitude to taxes creeps in, with the seriously big earners better off in countries such as Spain, Luxembourg, Germany or, God forbid, by returning to the UK. These temporal limits to untrammelled wealth may well sort out the instant millionaires from the also-rans, as it’s so galling to earn a million euros every year and only be able to spend just a little under half that amount!