Personal income as unemployed PR

[adisakau]

I'm HK PR without job in HK. I also I never registered any business here.

Recently I do freelance project for a friend abroad, and I'll invoice them with address in HK and recieve payment with my bank account in HK.

Does this cause any trouble?

It's temporary project, and probably the only income I recieve in HK this tax year. However I want to file it on incoming tax filing to avoid any issue that bank or IRD might ask (if that happens).

Could I just go on and fill the number or it's unnecessary? As the fee I will recieve will be less than minimun amount that require to pay tax

[PLamHK]

(Slow response after 2 weeks on the naughty step, sorry)

There's no need to file a tax return if your income from employment is lower than the tax free limit. There's a separate question of whether you should register a sole proprietor business, though for a few thousand dollars as a one-off I don't think anyone will care.

[adisakau]

Thanks!

[Morrison]

With a sole proprietorship they will ask you to file tax, and if you close it you need to keep the files seven years.amen

[PLamHK]

With a sole proprietorship they will ask you to file tax, and if you close it you need to keep the files seven years.amen

I have had a sole prop for about 20 years. I guess I've filed taxes in about 5 or 6 of those, essentially when married and there was a benefit to doing so.

[adisakau]

Thanks guys. I thinks I will go on getting the money and keep my mouth shut.

[MABinPengChau]

I'm HK PR without job in HK. I also I never registered any business here.

Recently I do freelance project for a friend abroad, and I'll invoice them with address in HK and recieve payment with my bank account in HK.

Does this cause any trouble?

It's temporary project, and probably the only income I recieve in HK this tax year. However I want to file it on incoming tax filing to avoid any issue that bank or IRD might ask (if that happens).

Could I just go on and fill the number or it's unnecessary? As the fee I will recieve will be less than minimun amount that require to pay tax

Just FYI, some banks get, uh, weird, if you make too many business transactions in a personal account, this sounds like a one-off. I don't understand why this is, but, whatever. So if you have an overseas account that the client transfers the payment into and then you transfer from that personal account to this personal account (if any kind of recurrence), just an idea. Like I said, probably NOT an issue...

[hksomewhere]

(Slow response after 2 weeks on the naughty step, sorry)

There's a separate question of whether you should register a sole proprietor business, though for a few thousand dollars as a one-off I don't think anyone will care.

FYI, you can apply for exemption from business registration fees if the average monthly sales of the sole proprietorship do not exceed $30k/$10k for services. Not sure how this works in practice since I assume you need to pay the fees to establish the sole proprietorship in the first place

https://www.ird.gov.hk/eng/tax/bre_erp.htm?t

[PLamHK]

My Sole Prop has met that requirement for the last several years, so every year I do a simple online form-filling to avoid any annual fees.