Don't believe that Cathay kindly adjusted salaries to account for
the difference in tax for overseas basings.
In fact quite the opposite, they reduced the actual pay difference
by about 30% and made no allowance for local taxes at all.
So, the actual take home pay became approx 50% of that for
HKG based people.
Emirates could do the same if they were to base pilots, trouble
is after reducing salary to home country rates and applying local
taxes- you would'nt have enough left to feed a baby camel.
The single biggest incentive for Cathay to base people was to extract pilots out of the provident fund.
Emirates would not benefit from guys leaving their fund to the
same extent.
Basings would have to be at lower pay rates, for DEC's or whoever, otherwise the pilot body in Dubai would revolt.