{"id":1652,"date":"2015-02-25T14:27:45","date_gmt":"2015-02-25T06:27:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thomsonscpa.com\/v3\/?p=1652"},"modified":"2025-08-27T17:31:30","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T09:31:30","slug":"201516-hong-kong-government-budget-highlights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thomsonscpa.com\/v3\/201516-hong-kong-government-budget-highlights\/","title":{"rendered":"2015-16 Hong Kong Government Budget Highlights"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>2015\/16 Hong Kong Government Budget Highlights<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Financial Secretary John Tsang delivered the eighth budget speech of his career on 25 February 2015. In it he announced a revised budget surplus for 2014\/15 of HK$63.8 billion and a forecast surplus of HK$36.8 billion for next year. The budget proposals will need approval by the Legislative Council before taking effect.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Profits Tax<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The profits tax rates for companies (16.5%) and unincorporated businesses (15%) remain unchanged.<\/li>\n<li>Amend the tax law to allow, under specified conditions, interest deductions under profits tax for corporate treasury centres and a reduction in the profits tax rate for specified treasury activities of 50%.<\/li>\n<li>Consider extending the scope of tax deduction for capital expenditure incurred on the purchase of intellectual property rights to cover more types of intellectual property rights as appropriate.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Salaries Tax<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>No change in the standard tax rate, marginal tax rates and marginal tax bands.<\/li>\n<li>Increase the basic and additional child allowance in the year of birth from HK$70,000 to HK$100,000 each. After the increase, the total allowance for a child born in 2015\/16 will be HK$200,000 for the year.<\/li>\n<li>Provide tax concession for subscribers to regulated health\/medical insurance products.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>One-off Measures <\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Profits tax for 2014\/15 to be reduced by 75% subject to a ceiling of HK$20,000, to be deducted from the taxpayer\u2019s final tax payable for the year.<\/li>\n<li>Waive 75% of salaries tax and tax under personal assessment for 2014\/15, subject to a ceiling of HK$20,000, to be deducted from the taxpayer\u2019s final tax payable for the year.<\/li>\n<li>Waive rates for the first two quarters of 2015\/16, subject to a ceiling of HK$2,500 per quarter for each rateable property.<\/li>\n<li>Pay one month\u2019s rent for the lower income tenants of public housing, excluding certain wealthier tenants and non-elderly tenants.<\/li>\n<li>Provide two additional months of Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) payment, Old Age Allowance, Old Age Living Allowance and Disability Allowance.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Others Points of Interest<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Inject additional $400 million into the CreateSmart Initiative to support different sectors of the creative industries.<\/li>\n<li>Earmark $23 million in the coming three years for offering intellectual property consultation, manpower training and other services to SMEs.<\/li>\n<li>Having Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTPC) earmark $50 million to set up a corporate venture fund for co-investment, on a matching basis with private funds, for start-ups, subject to certain conditions.<\/li>\n<li>Issue \u201ciBond\u201d (i.e. inflation-linked retail bonds) worth up to HK$10 billion.<\/li>\n<li>Set aside $50 billion to provide better retirement protection for the elderly in need.<\/li>\n<li>Establish a Future Fund to serve as long-term savings. The fund will be placed in long-term investments for higher returns.<\/li>\n<li>The 2015\/16 Land Sale Programme will include 29 residential sites (of which 16 are new ones), four commercial\/business sites and one site for hotel development.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Short-term Targeted Support Measures<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Waive the licence fees for travel agents, hotels and guesthouses, restaurants, hawkers and operators with restricted food permits for six months.<\/li>\n<li>Waive vehicle examination fee once for the renewal of vehicle licences of taxis, light buses, franchised and non-franchised buses, goods vehicles, trailers and special purpose vehicles within a year.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Support for Small and Medium Enterprises<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Extend the application period for special concessionary measures under SME Financing Guarantee Scheme to 29 February 2016.<\/li>\n<li>Inject $1.5 billion into the SME Export Marketing and Development Funds.<\/li>\n<li>increase the maximum amount of funding support for each project under the SME Development Fund from $2\u00a0million to $5\u00a0million; and<\/li>\n<li>expand the scope of the SME Export Marketing Fund.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Source:\u00a0http:\/\/www.budget.gov.hk\/2015\/index.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2015\/16 Hong Kong Government Budget Highlights Financial Secretary John Tsang delivered the eighth budget speech of his career on 25 February 2015. In it he announced a revised budget surplus for 2014\/15 of HK$63.8 billion and a forecast surplus of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1653,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[29,32,44],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomsonscpa.com\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomsonscpa.com\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomsonscpa.com\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomsonscpa.com\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomsonscpa.com\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1652"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomsonscpa.com\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1671,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomsonscpa.com\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652\/revisions\/1671"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomsonscpa.com\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomsonscpa.com\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomsonscpa.com\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomsonscpa.com\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}