The Financial Secretary proposed a number of tax measures in his 2015-16 Budget speech on 25 February 2015. All of these measures require legislative amendments before implementation.
Highlights of the measures are given below;
Reducing profits tax, salaries tax and tax under personal assessment for the year of assessment 2014/15 by 75%, subject to a ceiling of $20,000 per case. For profits tax, the ceiling of the tax reduction is applied to each business. For salaries tax, the ceiling is applied to each individual taxpayer; but for couples jointly assessed, the ceiling is applied to each couple. For personal assessment, single taxpayers will each be subject to the ceiling. Married couples must make their personal assessment election together and the ceiling will therefore apply to each couple. The proposed tax reduction is not applicable to property tax. Individuals with rental income, if eligible for personal assessment, may be able to enjoy such reduction under personal assessment. The proposed tax reduction will only be applicable to the final tax for the year of assessment 2014/15, but not to the provisional tax of the same year. Therefore, taxpayers are still required to pay their provisional tax on time despite the proposed reduction.
Increasing child allowances from the current $70,000 to $100,000 for each child effective from the year of assessment 2015/16. After the increase, the total allowance for a child born in 2015/16 will be $200,000 for the year.
Providing tax concessions to corporate treasury centres:Â on profits tax, the Financial Secretary proposed to allow, under specified conditions, interest deductions under profits tax for corporate treasury centres and reducing profits tax for specified treasury activities by 50 per cent.
Profits tax exemption for private equity funds: The Government plans to table a bill in the Legislative Council later to allow private equity funds to enjoy profits tax exemption available to offshore funds.