Profits tax returns in Hong Kong
In Hong Kong the deadline is printed on your return, not fixed by your year end. We read it, claim the extension you are owed, and file with the evidence already assembled.
Notify within
Уведомить в срок
4 months
4 месяца
Wrong return fine
Штраф за ошибку
HK$10,000
10 000 HKD
E-filing adds
Подача через сеть
1 more month
плюс месяц
Records kept for
Хранение записей
7 years
7 лет
When you need help with a Hong Kong profits tax return
The return arrived with a date on it
A profits tax return carries its own compliance date, counted from the day it was issued rather than from your year end. That date is the one that binds.
No return came, but profits did
Silence from the department is not a holiday. If you are chargeable and no return reached you, the duty to say so in writing is yours, and it expires four months on.
You intend to claim profits offshore
The claim is decided on what your people actually did to earn the money, and on where they did it. It stands or falls on the file you can produce.
Your group has two Hong Kong companies
Connected companies cannot both sit on the lower tier. One of them is nominated, the choice is declared in the return, and for that year it cannot be taken back.
The business has stopped trading
Ceasing to carry on business starts a one-month clock of its own, separate from any return you still owe.
What profits tax support in Hong Kong covers
Hong Kong prints its rates plainly, and they are the easy half. The work is the calendar the return runs on, the evidence behind a source position, and the choices a group makes once and cannot unmake.
The rates themselves are carried by our article on the main taxes and fees in Hong Kong. For the same service with no country attached, see corporate tax support; everything else we handle in the territory sits on the Hong Kong page.
What you get
- Your compliance date read off the return itself, and the extension you are entitled to claimed
- Written notice of chargeability filed before the four months run out
- Audited accounts, computation and supplementary forms assembled as one package
- A source position built from contracts, people and delivery records rather than from the customer's address
- One nomination for the lower tier across the group, made knowingly and on time
How the filing date is actually set
Your accounting date sets the code
Returns are issued in bulk each April, and the date printed on yours gives one month to file. What you may claim on top depends on when your accounting period ends.
April to November: nothing extra
An accounting date in this span carries no block extension at all. The month printed on the return is the whole of it.
December and January to March: whole months
A December accounting date is extended to the middle of the following August. One falling between January and March runs to the middle of November, and loss cases in that band are looked at separately.
Filing electronically adds a month
A further month is granted on application where the return is filed through the internet, counted from whichever is later: the extended date or the normal one.
What travels with the return
A corporation with gross income files audited financial statements together with the return. The exceptions are narrow: a dormant company, one incorporated where an audit is not legally required, and a Hong Kong branch of a foreign company meeting the stated conditions. Supplementary forms go in electronically whatever mode the return uses, and the lower-tier election is one of them.
What a wrong return costs
An incorrect return without reasonable excuse carries a fine of HK$10,000 and a further fine of three times the tax undercharged. Doing it wilfully to evade tax raises that to HK$50,000, the same treble charge and up to three years in prison. The department often deals with the first kind administratively, assessing additional tax instead of prosecuting.
Sources: notification of chargeability in four months, the one-month notice on cessation and the seven-year record rule — sections 51(2), 51(6) and 51C of the Inland Revenue Ordinance as summarised in the department's own guide to taxes; the extension dates — its block extension circular; audited accounts with the return — completion of profits tax returns; the fines — section 80(2).
Stages of work
Reading the return you were issued.
We take the compliance date off the return, work out your accounting date code, and establish what extension you can claim and by when the application has to be in.
Checking whether a notice is owed instead.
Where no return was issued and the company is chargeable, the written notice is the obligation, and it expires four months after the period ends. We check this first, because it runs silently.
Closing the accounts and getting them audited.
The audit is not a separate errand: the statements travel inside the return. We engage the auditor early enough that the extended date is still ahead of us.
Building the source position.
For each material stream of profit we trace who negotiated, who performed, where the work happened and what the payment records show, and keep that narrative with the contracts behind it.
Deciding the group's elections once.
Where connected companies exist, the lower tier goes to one of them. We compare the effect across the group before the choice is declared: for that year it is final.
Filing, then holding the file.
The return, the computation and the supplementary forms go in together. Afterwards the assessment, the provisional charge and any question are answered out of the records we hold, which stay seven years.
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