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How can I sue my HK Employer for withholding my final salary after I have left the company?

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  1. #11

    Join Date
    Aug 2017
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    It is after all a HK Conpany. And if the company did not contribute taxes, they should be penalised. The Labour Dept should be interested in errant employers like this?


  2. #12

    By the way, did your former employer tell you any reason why uphold your salary.


  3. #13

    Join Date
    Aug 2017
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    No... they are just ignoring my emails and not answering my calls


  4. #14

    Join Date
    Jun 2004
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    HK
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    If you don't mind us asking - how much is it? and does it means a lot to you (ie you cannot live without it for example or it makes your life very hard).

    Asking to balance it vs the cost of a lawyer.

    That said, unless they have a valid reason (not specialist here) - they should not be holding up your last pay without any explanation.


  5. #15

    Join Date
    Aug 2017
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    11

    Its US$15,000. No valid reason since all my handover and clearance has been signed off by 8 departments.

    Mat likes this.

  6. #16

    Bring your employment contract & all these emails & communication with you when you go to Labour Department. You can also try to go up directly to the employer's office &ask for payment or reason. But first go to Labour Department. If still fail, let us know & see other ways to achieve this goal.


  7. #17

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    Quote Originally Posted by atschang:
    Bring your employment contract & all these emails & communication with you when you go to Labour Department. You can also try to go up directly to the employer's office &ask for payment or reason. But first go to Labour Department. If still fail, let us know & see other ways to achieve this goal.
    The guy is not in HK and has never technically been an HK resident. This is not a local labour department issue from what I can tell.

    I may be wrong.. but ....

  8. #18

    From the limited facts here, it seems that no salaries tax would be due in HK related to the OP, BUT that a tax return would still be needed and a claim for 100% exemption made due to service wholly performed outside HK. Until that is done, and clearance received from IRD then the company can hold on to the last month's salary under HK tax rules. In principle that should have been done before the last day of employment, but I've seen plenty of cases where it wasn't.

    The fact that they would be liable under the contract to pay any dues to IRD is a separate civil contracual dispute which you'd just have to emply a lawyer to sue for - there is no government or criminal involvement in that.


  9. #19

    Join Date
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    Quote Originally Posted by Evee:
    It is after all a HK Conpany. And if the company did not contribute taxes, they should be penalised. The Labour Dept should be interested in errant employers like this?
    Seriously - it's you in the wrong here. Pipe down. HK employers HAVE TO DO THIS. No doubt, being an overseas employee, you probably don't have any tax liability. But, the employer must hold the salary until the tax authority tells them to release it. The tax dept is probably utterly confused by this if it has no record of you (as it would not, if you don't live here) so this might just take a while to sort out.

    In Hong Kong, tax is NOT an employers liability. It's a personal liability. This obligation is about the only obligation employers have re tax, so forget your overseas perceptions of who should have paid tax. Thats not how HK works (which you would know, if you lived here).

  10. #20

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    Original Post Deleted
    And you seriously think HK admin departments are capable of differentiating this? Of course the OP is going to be outside HK after his/her employment.. they are already. That's probably enough to trigger this. There are penalties on the company for NOT withholding the money, this is far more likely to be a trigger. We got this wrong on the first person who left (before we knew about these rules). He buggered off from HK without paying his tax and we ended up in deep shit. Any employer with any experience is going to avoid this.

    Sure - the OP's employer might just be overly cautious. Or the person dealing with it might be on holiday / down with the summer flu. They might have to wait a little longer. But the ranting is out of all proportion to the issue.
    MandM! likes this.