Do banks pay for your housing?

Hi all,

So do banks pay for housing expenses? If you are not a local of the office you are hired into, for instance Hong Kong or New York, monthly rent might be maybe 24,000~36,000 USD/year, as a reasonable low~medium budget range. Do banks pay for the entire cost, apart from the nominal salary + bonus? I am also interested in whether BigLaw firms or IT firms (Google, etc) also do the same.

I'm wondering since I make a little more than half the amount that a IB associate makes, but I pay close to nothing in housing (maybe $6,000) and living expenses ($12,000), and taxes ($20,000) and save $50,000/year after tax. If I were living in NY, I would have to be paid $160,000/year to save the same amount. I also get local offers from bulge bracket banks, where the pay is perhaps 70% of what you could make in New York. So I'm wondering whether I should try and leave my current location or stay put within the vicinity.

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Banks in HK pay a housing stipend, but salary is definitely less. However tax is also less, so if you're NOT a US taxpayer, it's kind of a wash. If you are US tax payer, you can do a 2555 deduction, but you still pay global taxes to US after you're done paying HK taxes.

From the wording of the post I presume you're HK based, and are wondering if it makes sense to move to USA. I think you can expect that housing stipend to go away, your tax rate to go waaaay up, but your salary to go up too.

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