Comment: Geneva: You miss a banker and everything is depopulated

As reported by “24 hours” and the “Genève tribune”, the Geneva private banker Renaud de Planta will settle in Italy for tax reasons. By moving his papers to pay a tax package, he would save big, especially in terms of wealth tax due in Switzerland.

The banker, a former Pictet partner, described as a “figure in Geneva capitalism”, has neither confirmed nor infirm. But if this is the case, he would be one of the first to carry out the threat of the super rich to leave Switzerland if they have to pay too much taxes. Still according to the “TDG”, another banker from Place de la Constellation Pictet, Bertrand Demole, would also have moved his home in Italy.

These two departures take a blow to the eternal optimistic of Calvinist finance and risk making those who remain doubt. Does Planta Renaud go away because he fears the initiative of young socialists who want to tax big fortunes in Switzerland? The young Socialists of Geneva commented: “The departure in Italy of Renaud de Planta illustrates although the great Swiss fortunes favor their profits before the good of the community”. We already suspected it.

But in the ranks of the PLR, the news is taken with philosophy. “When someone who pays millions of taxes can increase to a 200,000 euros package, we cannot blame him to move,” said a PLR deputy in TDG, who adds that tax competition is obviously not amoral: “When wealthy taxpayers go away, we would better thank them for having contributed for a long time to our tax revenues rather than condemn them”.

So thank you to the two exiles for giving so much before going under the sky of Italy of Giorgia Meloni and Cie. Usually, the opposite is happening, Switzerland welcomes many tax packages for the rich foreigners. According to the latest figures published, around 5,000 people benefit from it, first in the cantons of Vaud, Valais, Ticino and Geneva. And among them surely a lot of Italians.

The rich are very mobile, they come according to their moods, as others go from the kitchen to the bathroom whistling. An article in “time”, written by a makeshift manager in the place, sheds light on the fascal fiscal migration of super rich. Unfortunately, a thousand times alas, the latest study by Henley & Partners shows that Switzerland is only 4ᵉ in the 2025 classification of the destinations most popular with super fortunes.

To hide nothing, it is Italy that occupies the 3ᵉ place of the podium, behind the Arab Emirates and the United States. The specialist evokes in our transalpine friends “an offensive, targeted, assumed tax dynamic: regime of flat tax Ultra-competitive, light inheritance taxation, attractive climate and a displayed political will to seduce mobile taxpayers ”.

Next to it, the Swiss tax package is called “dusty, rigid and out of step with modern expectations of large fortunes”. As for the Emirates, money is the subject of endless cult. In a few years, Dubai went from a sand bowl to a world hub for swimming of capital with “zero taxation on income, class infrastructure, perceived stability and a cosmopolitan environment favoring investment …”

This is real life on Earth which is spending under the nose of Genevans, Swiss and also Italians: zero tax in a luxurious and peaceful world paid by oil. This world which had fascinated Pierre Maudet a few years ago with the consequences that we know.