Lost with HK taxes

[Yulia Ezhikova]

Staring at ground zero with HK taxes and feeling overwhelmed. Just dealing with personal/salary taxes for myself and my partner at the moment.

Is there a reliable tax consultant anyone can recommend?

[chuckster007]

Filing HK taxes is NOT hard especailly when you have the document given to you by your company that they filed to IRD.

Are u filing taxes in the green document or online??

[ndt]

What/where is the confusion? For most parts people here should be able to help you save consultant money..

[Yulia Ezhikova]

So two things to start:

- we've been in and out of HK over the years and our addresses need to be updated, so the government letters can actually reach us. I looked into doing this online and almost lost my mind trying. I suspect we have to head somewhere in person to get it fixed?

- I never paid tax myself (was told by my previous company my salary is too small to be taxed and I won't need to worry about it in the first two years, so I didn't). My partner on the other hand got hit with an insane tax bill when we were leaving HK a year and a half ago. I still seriously think there must have been a mistake. It was equal to almost two months of his salary. He panicked and just paid it since it was two days before our flight.

I just want to get on top of it, so we have a line of communication with the government and know exactly what to expect/be smart when filing, so we're not hit with insane tax bills again.

[Mary 2]

If you think he paid too much that can still be revisited for a refund.

[ndt]

1) Go through this link and register for eTax filing, no need for physical form filling, address changing etc..

https://www.gov.hk/en/residents/taxe...tion/index.htm

2) Tax bill depends on salary/income and applicable deductions which are pretty straight forward for salaried person..

https://www.gov.hk/en/residents/taxe...ions/index.htm

If your partner's salary/income is high and deductions are not much, tax bill would go high.. Also, it included provisional tax for next year so usually first time tax bill is high..

Allowance, Deductions and Tax rate table..

https://www.ird.gov.hk/eng/pdf/pam61e.pdf


Online tax calculator..

https://www.gov.hk/en/residents/taxe...omputation.htm

[freeier]

Those things that you mentioned sounds fairly in line.. HK tax rate is around 13~15%, already one of the lowest in the world.. getting hit with a tax bill of around 2 months when you are leaving sounds just about right.

Tax consultant is not going to help you update your address and others.

[ycchai]

2 months salary is about right, thats 16.6%

Call them, email them, fax them, etc the tax dept is actually very helpful. Get an online account setup which I think its the best way to sort out your taxes

[GentleGeorge]

If you think HK taxes are hard to organise or hard to pay, I suggest never visiting a country with a "full-service" government...

[Yulia Ezhikova]

I come from a country with a centralised tax system, where taxes are deducted from every paycheck before it even gets to you, so I find even HK system non-intuitive. But some great advice here, thank you guys! Will try to setup online accounts for both of us and see where we're at.