ATHENS – As Greeks earning more than 40,000 euros ($44,454) pay 45 percent in taxes – twice the corporate rate – wealthy foreigners, now especially from the United Kingdom, could get big tax breaks by moving their tax residency.

Plans by the new Labor government in Britain to end a 200-year-old tax regime allowing foreign nationals who move there to pay no tax on income and profits earned abroad for 15 years are driving the rich to look elsewhere.

That likely could be Greece, said Kathimerini, with the government keen on attracting investors and the wealthy from other countries by giving them preferential tax rates at the same time many Greeks are heavily taxed.

UK investment firms, wealth managers and private bankers providing financial services to thousands of UK-based individuals are said to be looking at moving tax residences to Greece, Switzerland, Malta, Dubai and the Caribbean.

It is estimated that Britain will lose 9,500 millionaires in 2024, more than twice as many as last year’s 4,200, the report said, London losing more of its allure as a place for the rich to keep their money.

Greece has for a number of years seen more rich move their tax residences into the country to benefit from the tax breaks at the same time that tax brackets for workers keeps driving evasion because of the near confiscatory rates for many.

The Finance Ministry said that investments from the 213 wealthy people who moved to Greece in recent years corresponds to 106.5 million euros ($118.38 million in investments and could exceed 1 billion euros ($1.11 billion.)

Five are billionaires, one of whom is Greek, who invests in real estate and also in shares of Greek companies and all have family offices aimed at managing assets and investments, owned either directly or indirectly by the individuals who are tax residents of Greece and their family, the report said.

Greece offers wealthy foreigners a flat tax rate of 100,000 euros ($111,150) annually for 15 years on their incomes abroad no matter how much they make or have and no further obligation to declare the income.