Hong Kong Business Registration and Tax Filing for Founders: What You Actually Have to File

Founder tools: If you have not yet set up the entity, start with the Hong Kong company registration guide and the non-resident registration guide. If you are choosing a provider, the seven-provider comparison covers what each one actually files for you.

Most founders treat business registration as a receipt and tax registration as a punishment. Both are wrong, and the gap between them is where a Hong Kong company quietly gets into trouble. A business registration certificate is an annual obligation that follows your company for its whole life, whether or not you trade. Tax registration is not a punishment — it is the point at which the Inland Revenue Department becomes able to see that you are operating, and from that moment a set of deadlines starts running that most founders have never been told about.

Having watched this play out repeatedly over ten years of mentoring Hong Kong founders — including expats who arrived with no local accountant, no local payroll knowledge and no idea that hiring one person would trigger a filing calendar — the pattern is consistent.

The founders who stay compliant treat the Inland Revenue Department as an operating partner with a published rulebook, not as a body to be avoided until something goes wrong. The ones who get into trouble treated the first certificate as the end of the process, and discovered the deadlines later, when penalties were cheaper than the effort of checking.

Register the business, because the clock starts on the day you trade

The Business Registration Ordinance (Cap. 310) requires every person who carries on a business in Hong Kong to apply for business registration within one month from the date of commencement of the business. That includes people who have never heard the phrase before. The Inland Revenue Department treats internet trading as carrying on a business in Hong Kong: if you conduct trading activities or provide services through the internet and those activities are carried out or the services are provided in Hong Kong, you are required to apply for business registration.

There is no separate registration for a sole proprietor and a director of a company. A sole proprietor, a partnership, a trust and a corporation are all "persons carrying on business" for the purposes of the Ordinance. A small operator may be eligible for an exemption from paying the registration fee and levy under section 9 of the Business Registration Ordinance, but the Department is explicit that such a business operator is still required to register the business. Exempting you from the fee does not exempt you from the obligation, and a business registration certificate counts as a certificate for which the fee has been fully paid or exempted under section 9 of the Ordinance only if the exemption actually applies.

Once registered, you display the certificate. The valid business registration certificate must be displayed in a conspicuous place at the address where the business is carried on, and produced for official inspection on demand. An inspector authorised by the Commissioner has power to enter premises at which there is reason to believe a business is being carried on, and to make such examination and inquiry as may be necessary.

One more provision catches founders who are catching up rather than starting clean. The fee and levy are not only a forward charge. Any business registration fee and levy for back years is payable under section 7(3) of the Business Registration Ordinance, so a business that traded for two years without registering does not escape by registering now. The arrears land with the application.

So the sequence for a founder is short and unforgiving: start trading, apply within one month, pay, display the certificate, renew annually. If you are starting a Hong Kong company and have not yet registered, the Hong Kong startup cost breakdown sets the registration fee inside the wider cost picture.

Incorporate the company, and remember it still needs a certificate every year

Here is the point that catches even founders who did everything else correctly. Every company incorporated in Hong Kong, or re-domiciled here under the Companies Ordinance (Cap. 622), is deemed to be a person carrying on business — and is required to take out a business registration certificate annually until the company is dissolved or deregistered. Whether or not it is in operation. Incorporating a company does not discharge the registration obligation; for a Hong Kong-incorporated company it creates it.

There is one simplification. If you incorporated through the one-stop company and business registration service, the business registration application is made at the same time, and the certificate commences on your incorporation date. The fee for that first certificate is determined by the date you submitted the incorporation application to the Companies Registry, not by the date you started trading. If you incorporated by any other route, business registration is a separate application you still have to file.

The Electronic Transactions Ordinance (Cap. 553) is what makes the electronic filing route work: electronic records submitted to the Department are acceptable provided they conform to the prescribed format, manner and procedure, and the business registration electronic services run on that basis.

This is also where the identifier comes from. The Government has adopted the Business Registration Number assigned by the Business Registration Office as the Unique Business Identifier for companies and entities, with the Companies Registry implementing it for companies incorporated or registered under the Companies Ordinance from 27 December 2023. That means your business registration number and your company number are the same operational identifier in most dealings, which is worth knowing before you fill in a bank form and assume you need two separate numbers.

For the company itself, the Hong Kong annual compliance guide covers the parallel filing calendar you will be running alongside business registration renewal.

Know what the certificate does not prove

This is the most valuable thing the Inland Revenue Department publishes about business registration, and it is easy to read past. The Department states that business registration is not for regulating business activities and that it is not a licence to trade. Issuing a business registration certificate or branch registration certificate does not imply that the requirements of any law in relation to that business have been complied with. Apart from business registration, you may need to apply for other types of licences or obtain recognised professional qualifications for operating certain kinds of business.

So a valid business registration certificate tells a bank, a landlord or a counterparty that you are on the Business Register and that you have paid. It does not tell them that you are permitted to do what you are about to do. If you are running a business that needs a specific licence, you need that licence on its own merits, and the business registration certificate does not substitute for it.

There is a second consequence worth knowing, because it affects how much comfort you should take from the Business Register. The Department explains that the information provided by business operators is only summarily checked and will not be verified before any new entry or amendment is recorded, unless there are reasonable grounds for doubts to be cast. Information on the Business Register is for reference only. When you file your application, the accuracy of what you submit is on you.

Pay the fee, and choose the certificate length that matches your runway

Business registration is one of the few founder costs that is completely predictable, because the fee table is published and the amounts have not changed since 1 August 2011. The key is that the levy is charged per year, which is why the three-year figures are not simply three times the one-year figures.

Read that table carefully and the three-year option is the better deal per year. The one-year certificate costs HK$2,450 in total, of which HK$450 is the annual levy. Over three years the levy component is HK$1,350, and the registration fee portion is HK$5,200 against HK$2,000 for a single year. The saving comes from the fee, not the levy, and it is real: three one-year certificates cost HK$7,350, against HK$6,550 for a single three-year certificate, a difference of HK$800.

You can also elect a three-year certificate when you first register. The Department requires the selection to be made in a statement in the application form for registration, and the election can be revoked in writing at any time not later than one month before the expiry of a current three-year certificate. For businesses already on the register, the selection is made by written notice to the Commissioner, and it must be made at least one month before the current certificate expires — so if your certificate expires on 15 May, the selection must be made on or before 15 April. If you want the next renewal issued on a three-year basis, that is the date to diarise.

Renewal itself is not a filing you chase. The Business Registration Office sends a business registration demand note approximately in the middle of the month preceding the month in which the renewal certificate commences, so a certificate commencing in May is chased by a demand note issued in mid-April. Once the fee and levy on that demand note are paid, the receipted demand note becomes the business registration certificate, valid until the "Date of Expiry" printed on it. If the demand note does not arrive, you must inform the Commissioner in writing within one month of the expiry of your current certificate, and you can still renew in person, by post or electronically with your old certificate.

All of this is handled through the Business Registration Electronic Services on the Inland Revenue Department's eTAX services, which include application for business or branch registration, change of particulars, application for exemption from payment of fee and levy, and viewing or downloading your demand note and certificate. If you lose the certificate, you can apply for a duplicate through GovHK, and eTAX users can view, download and print the certificate in PDF format within two months of settling the fee.

Notify the Department that you are liable to tax

Business registration tells the Inland Revenue Department you exist. It does not tell them you owe tax. These are separate steps, and the second one has a deadline that founders rarely know about.

The Department's guidance for first-time taxpayers is that if you consider you are liable to Salaries Tax, Profits Tax or Property Tax for a year of assessment, and you have not already received a tax return, you have to write or fax to the Department within four months after the end of the basis period for that year. For a business you notify using Form IR6168, providing the name and business registration number of the business. Salary earners use Form IR6167 and property owners use Form IR6129.

Read that again. It is not a rule that says "file a return if the Department asks". It says the opposite: the Department does not know you are taxable until you tell it, and the obligation to tell it falls on you. If the Department has not sent you a return, the four-month notification duty is live whether or not you have received anything in the post.

Once you are on the roll, the filing cycle follows your basis period, which is normally the twelve-month period from 1 April to 31 March. Corporations and partnership businesses with gross income during the basis period must submit all supporting documents, including financial statements and tax computations, together with the Profits Tax Return. The return forms are BIR51 for corporations, BIR52 for persons other than corporations, and BIR54 in respect of non-resident persons. Blank tax return forms are not available for download; what is published are specimen forms, notes and instructions, and a pro forma computation, for reference and filing guidance only.

The rate your profits are taxed at depends on who you are, not on how big you are. For the year of assessment 2018/19 onwards, corporations pay 8.25% on assessable profits up to HK$2,000,000 and 16.5% on any part above that level. Unincorporated businesses pay 7.5% up to HK$2,000,000 and 15% above. These are rates on assessable profits, which is after allowable deductions, not on turnover. A company with HK$3,000,000 of assessable profits does not pay 16.5% on all of it — the first HK$2,000,000 is taxed at 8.25% and the remaining HK$1,000,000 at 16.5%, giving HK$165,000 plus HK$165,000, or HK$330,000.

Our guide to your first Hong Kong profits tax return walks through the filing sequence in detail, and if you are comparing advisers for the first return, the CPA firm selection questions are worth reading before you appoint anyone.

Hire your first employee, and start the employer filing calendar

This is the point at which a Hong Kong business moves from one annual filing to several, and the obligations do not wait for you to have a bookkeeper in place. The Department's guidance is direct: your tax obligations commence when you hire the first employee.

From that day you must maintain a record of each employee's personal particulars, including name, address, identity card or passport number with place of issue, and marital status; the nature of the employment and the capacity in which the person is employed; the amount of cash remuneration, regardless of denomination, including remuneration paid outside Hong Kong; non-cash and fringe benefits such as quarters, holiday journey benefits, share awards and share options; the employer's and employee's MPF contributions; the employment contract and any amendments to its terms; and the period of employment.

You must also inform the Inland Revenue Department of any change to an employee's personal particulars, such as a change of residential or postal address or a change of marital status; any change to the employee's terms of employment, such as a move from full time to part time; and the employee's Hong Kong Identity Card number once it is known. And you must keep business accounting records, including payroll records, for at least seven years.

There is a second layer here that catches cross-border founders. If your company pays an employee who is seconded to it by a non-Hong Kong entity, the obligation still bites: the employer is obliged to file Form IR56B for all its employees, irrespective of whether the employee rendered services in or outside Hong Kong, so long as their total income exceeded the relevant threshold. Where an employee is assigned or seconded to you, the entire income earned for services rendered during the assignment is reported, with item 13 completed where the income was paid by a non-Hong Kong entity in whole or in part. Being billed by an overseas entity is not a way to avoid the Hong Kong filing.

For the wider picture on how a Hong Kong employer handles directors, shares and cross-border remuneration, the Hong Kong salaries tax guide for founders covers the personal side of what you are reporting.

Enrol the employee in MPF, and make the contribution correctly

Under the Mandatory Provident Fund system, employers are legally obliged to enrol new employees in the MPF scheme they participate in. This is not optional, and the obligation sits with the employer regardless of the employee's contribution status.

Both the employer and the employee must contribute 5% of the employee's relevant income, subject to the minimum and maximum relevant income levels. For monthly-paid employees those levels are currently HK$7,100 and HK$30,000, which produces a straightforward table:

The employer must make the contribution with its own funds, and must deduct the employee's contribution from the employee's relevant income for each contribution period, generally the wage period. For employees paid daily, weekly or bi-monthly, the employer first calculates the minimum and maximum relevant income levels of the wage period from the daily levels of HK$280 and HK$1,000, so the weekly minimum is HK$1,960 and the weekly maximum is HK$7,000.

What counts as relevant income is broader than salary. It refers to all monetary payments paid or payable by an employer to an employee, including wages, salary, leave pay, fees, commissions, bonuses, gratuities, perquisites and allowances. It excludes severance payments and long service payments under the Employment Ordinance. If you pay bonuses or commission, they sit inside the MPF calculation, not outside it.

One point that is often stated wrongly: mandatory contributions are fully and immediately vested in the employee once they are paid into the MPF account, and any investment return derived from them is also fully and immediately vested in that employee. There is no vesting period on mandatory MPF contributions. The Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority publishes the full contribution table and the examples of what counts as relevant income.

File the employer's return, using the right form for the event

Annually, your employer must file the employer's return with a Form IR56B for each reportable employee, within one month of the issue of the forms. For the year ended 31 March 2026, the Form BIR56A employer's returns were issued on 1 April 2026, and the IR56 Forms Preparation Tool is available to prepare the IR56B data file from 1 March each year. The Department's guidance is that employers are encouraged to file online through the eTAX platform, and the Inland Revenue Department employer guidance sets out the electronic filing route.

Who you have to report is defined by the Notes and Instructions for Form BIR56A, and it is broader than "everyone you pay a full salary to". A Form IR56B must be completed for employees whose total income is in excess of the Basic Allowance of the relevant year of assessment, with the Basic Allowance for 2025/26 being HK$132,000, proportionately reduced if employed for less than a year. Directors, married persons and part-time employees who were likely to have other income chargeable to Salaries Tax must be reported irrespective of the amount paid. Employees of a non-Hong Kong entity assigned or seconded to you fall in scope. Persons to whom a pension was paid or accrued must be reported. And former employees and former directors who realised a gain on a share option previously granted must be reported, with a threshold applying where they had no other income chargeable to Salaries Tax.

What you report is gross income, not net pay. You report the employee's gross income before deducting their own contributions to a recognised retirement scheme, and mandatory and voluntary employer contributions are not reported at all. The same rule governs deductibility on the employer's own side: contributions to a mandatory provident fund scheme in respect of the proprietor or employee are not deductible, subject to section 16AA of the Inland Revenue Ordinance, and section 8(9) of that Ordinance treats accrued benefits from the employer's voluntary scheme contributions as income received by the employee. The Notes and Instructions give a worked example: with a monthly salary of HK$20,000, employer and employee retirement scheme contributions of 8% and 5%, and a net monthly sum received of HK$19,000, the amount reported at item 11(a) is HK$20,000 × 12 months, or HK$240,000, and the employer's contributions of HK$19,200 are not included in the income reported.

Choosing the right form matters because the deadlines differ. If an employee ceased employment during the reporting year, you file Form IR56F instead of IR56B, and it is due not later than one month before the date of cessation — which means the deadline is in the past by the time you notice, if you notice late. Form IR56G covers a director's income of a different character, and Form IR56M is used to report service payments made to local unincorporated entities, while non-resident service payments are reported on Form IR623 or IR623P as appropriate. Every Form IR56B must be signed by the same responsible person who signs the declaration on the BIR56A.

Two housekeeping points that are easy to miss and tedious to fix afterwards. You must give the person you filed the IR56B for a copy of it, and retain copies of all IR56Bs you have filed. And all amounts must be shown in Hong Kong dollars, excluding cents.

Worked example — choosing the certificate length. A founder expects to still be trading in three years and has no plan to register a branch. One-year certificates cost HK$2,450 each, so three of them cost HK$7,350. A single three-year certificate costs HK$6,550. The saving is HK$800, and the founder also removes two renewal cycles, each of which carries its own one-month demand note and one-month notification risk. The levy is charged per year in both cases, so the saving comes entirely from the registration fee being lower across three years, and nothing is gained or lost on the annual levy of HK$450. Now take a founder who will almost certainly stop trading within eighteen months: the three-year certificate costs HK$800 more than the equivalent period of one-year certificates, and the founder has paid the levy on a year in which the business was not running.

Read the legal framework, because four ordinances sit behind these filings

None of these deadlines are administrative preferences. They sit on the face of Hong Kong ordinances, and knowing which one governs which filing is the fastest way to understand why the Department is strict about it.

One practical consequence of the Business Registration Ordinance is worth stating on its own, because it is counter-intuitive. The IRD will not accept an application for a business that has not commenced business. For a sole proprietorship or partnership, the application must be made once the business has actually commenced, and the certificate then commences from that date, not from the date you applied. So the one-month deadline is a deadline to apply, not a permission to apply early. A founder who files a speculative application before trading begins will find the submission rejected, and will have used up part of the one-month window.

Keep one deadline table, because the dates are what founders miss

Almost every compliance failure I see is not a misunderstanding of the rules. It is a missed date, on a calendar nobody wrote down. The obligations below are all published by the Inland Revenue Department or the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority, and all of them run from a trigger you control.

Read the last row again, because it is the one that catches people out. If an employee leaves on 30 September, the IR56F is due by 30 August. You are working backwards from the departure date, and by the time you know they are leaving, the filing deadline has already passed. A resignation in the first week of a month can be the single most expensive administrative mistake in a small Hong Kong company, because the late-filing consequence falls on the company rather than the departing employee.

Two of these run on the same underlying clock and are easy to confuse. Business registration renewal is driven by the demand note the Department sends you roughly a month before expiry, and it is an annual payment. The employer's return is driven by the Department issuing the BIR56A on 1 April, and it is an annual filing. They land in different months, but a founder who only looks at one of them will eventually miss the other.

And one of them is not annual at all. The first-time taxpayer notification is a once-only obligation, triggered by your first basis period, and it is the one most founders never file because nothing prompted them. Our first Hong Kong profits tax return guide covers the return that follows it.

Use a tax representative, and know when the Department expects one

Running these filings properly means a payroll process that works across a reporting year, not a series of forms completed in a panic in April. That is where a professional adviser earns their fee, and where founders most often try to do it themselves and then pay more to fix it later.

Hong Kong's major firms all maintain Hong Kong tax and employer compliance practices that cover this ground, and their published material is a useful second opinion on how the rules are applied in practice. KPMG's Hong Kong SAR tax insights track Hong Kong-specific tax positions, PwC Hong Kong's tax services cover the filing and advisory side, EY's Hong Kong tax practice covers the employer and cross-border elements, and Deloitte's Hong Kong tax services cover the audit and assurance interaction that follows a filing cycle. For a founder-stage business, KPMG's private enterprise practice and PwC Hong Kong's entrepreneurial and private business team are built around the same early-stage questions you are dealing with.

On the accounting side, the HKICPA standards resource centre is where the Hong Kong financial reporting standards sit, and those are the rules your accountant applies when the payroll and the company accounts have to agree.

Separately, the Inland Revenue Department maintains a Tax Representatives' Corner for registered tax representatives, and filing through eTAX gives service agents their own portal for managing client tax matters electronically. If you appoint someone to file for you, you are dealing with a regulated professional relationship, not a bookkeeping convenience.

Check what the evidence establishes before you rely on it

The Inland Revenue Department and the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority publish these rules, and this article quotes them directly. What they do not establish is what will happen to your business.

• Confirmed by the sources cited: the one-month registration and notification deadlines, the business registration fee and levy amounts, the three-year certificate election rules, the one-month display requirement, the first-time taxpayer four-month notification duty, the two-tiered profits tax rates, the payroll record requirements and seven-year retention period, the MPF contribution rates and relevant income levels, the employer's return filing deadline, and the IR56B, IR56F and IR56G reporting thresholds.
• Fact-dependent: whether your activity is carrying on a business in Hong Kong, whether you qualify for an exemption from the registration fee and levy, whether you are carrying on a business so as to be liable to tax, whether an employee is reportable, and the assessable profits of any particular year.
• To verify before you act: the current fee table, the current Basic Allowance for the year of assessment you are filing, whether a licence or permit is required for your activity, and the current position on any deferred or disputed filing.