Hi Folks,
I'm about to sign on the Hong Kong offer letter, but need your wisdom on the housing allowance issue.
My manager told me that part of my income would come in the form of housing allowance (to be exact, US$54000 per year) when we were crunchign numbers, and he gave me one NY offer first ( which listed all my income as base salary + bonus, but no housing allowance), and told me to wait for the Hong Kong offer letter. When the Hong Kong letter came in, I found that they simply converted USD into HKD amount, and forgot the housing allowance part.
I plan to call Hong Kong HR and ask about it. But I'm such a dummy in HK tax and housing, I desperately need some advice/analysis from you guys. My total income is fixed, so its just a game of adding numbers, if they give me some housing allowance, then they'll cut some on my base or bonus, so the final question is, is housing allowance tax-free ? I am in a confusion right now because most people say it is tax-free, but some say no, and the official messages from google tend to say no. Could anybody help ?
BTW, Any NCAA fans ? Especially Fighting Irish fans or haters ? I set up a SlingBox in NY and plan to watch the games in HK, would love to have somebody to share or fight over the game.