Hong Kong salaries tax 2026/27: rates, 60 days of visits, and why your job matters more than your days

Most country pages on this site start with a residence test. Hong Kong's Salaries Tax does not have one, in the leaflets of the Inland Revenue Department that we read. The tax is payable on income from an office or employment for each year of assessment, from 1 April to 31 March, and the question that decides how much is whether your employment is a Hong Kong employment or a non-Hong Kong one. With a Hong Kong employment, which the department says covers the great majority of people coming to work, all earnings are assessable whichever days you spent where. With a non-Hong Kong employment, the assessor works from your days in Hong Kong each year, and 60 days of visits or fewer means no tax at all. PAM 42 is firm that nationality does not help: someone born in Hong Kong who is seconded back full time from a US employer pays as a local does, with no relief by reason of nationality, residence or citizenship. Your job's contract and control come first, then your calendar.

The lower of two calculations

Progressive rates on net chargeable income. The tax charged is the lower of this and the standard rate, 15% then 16% above HK$5 million of net income.

Two sums are done, and you pay the smaller. The progressive sum takes total income less deductions and allowances. The standard sum takes total income less deductions only, with no allowances, at 15% on the first HK$5,000,000 of net income and 16% on the remainder, since 2024/25. The IRD's table dated August 2026 sets the basic allowance at HK$145,000 and the married person's allowance at HK$290,000 from 2026/27, with HK$140,000 for each of the first nine children, up from HK$132,000, HK$264,000 and HK$130,000 in 2025/26. The rates are the same across those years. Tax reductions are set year by year: 100% capped at HK$3,000 for 2025/26, and the table shows none yet for 2026/27.

A year of assessment comes with Provisional Salaries Tax, usually based on the preceding year's income less allowances. A newcomer should expect that in a second bill. The law also penalises failing to notify chargeability within 4 months after the basis period ends, when no return has been issued to you, so waiting for a form to arrive is not a safe plan.

Hong Kong employment or not: what the assessor looks at

The leaflet's examples sort this quickly. A person recruited in Toronto, assigned around five Asian cities with regional duties, appears to have a non-Hong Kong employment. A researcher employed by a Beijing enterprise, sent for a project from May to September, clearly has one. A trainee hired for the Hong Kong branch of an international firm has a Hong Kong employment, even with short trips abroad. To support a non-Hong Kong claim, the department usually asks for details of the employer, the contract and where it was negotiated, entered into and enforceable, where the pay comes from, and a travel schedule showing arrivals, departures and the purpose of each trip. It may go as far as the organisation charts, to find out who supervises whom. Directors are treated separately: a Hong Kong office means full assessment, and earnings from a non-Hong Kong directorship are exempt.

Two ways of counting days, one trip apart

This is the part that deserves care, because the same trip gives two numbers.

For the 60-day test, arriving at 11:59 pm on 30 March and leaving at 11 am on 31 March is a visit of 2 days. PAM 42's Singapore marketing manager makes three trips, 14, 24 and 22 days, for 60 exactly, and is exempt for 2025/26. Leaving one day later, on 23 February, would have meant tax on the days-in-days-out basis. Once you are over, income is apportioned: days in Hong Kong over 365, times full income. Its Toronto example comes to 165 days out of 365 for 2025/26, with a stay that crosses 31 March split across two years. Allowances paid for the stay are fully taxable with no apportionment, and leave pay attributable to Hong Kong service is added using its own formula.

Exemptions if your work takes you out of Hong Kong

A Hong Kong employee can claim, year by year, on three other grounds in the leaflet: all services performed outside Hong Kong in the year; tax of a similar kind paid to a territory on income from services rendered there, which from 2018/19 no longer applies to territories that have a comprehensive double taxation arrangement with Hong Kong; or, for those territories, a tax credit if you are a Hong Kong resident person. Training, a conference or reporting on work progress during a trip counts as rendering service in Hong Kong. So a "visit" with a meeting is still service, and you will not get out of it by calling the trip non-working.

What this does not settle

We did not read the wider rules on who is a Hong Kong resident person for treaties, nor property or profits tax. Other countries keep their own tests in any case: a 60-day exemption in Hong Kong has no effect on the UK or US count, and the dual residency page shows how a treaty is applied. See the country table for the rest. The travel schedule that the assessor asks for is a list of dates and reasons, which you can keep in the Taxlag app; the counter here is free.