Hong Kong salaries tax calculator

Two calculations, and you pay the lower one

Hong Kong does not have a tax scale. It has two, and salaries tax is whichever produces the smaller number.

The progressive calculation applies 2%, 6%, 10%, 14.0% and 17% to net chargeable income in four steps of HK$50,000 — that is, to income after both deductions and personal allowances.

The standard rate calculation applies 15% to the first HK$5,000,000 of net income and 16% to the rest — to income after deductions but before allowances.

Nothing else on this site works this way. The nearest relative is the US alternative minimum tax, and even that is an additional charge rather than a substitute. In Hong Kong neither calculation is primary: the law simply takes the lower.

On HK$800,000 of net income, a single person's progressive figure is HK$93,350 and the standard figure is HK$120,000, so the bill is HK$93,350 — the progressive route, at an effective rate of 11.7%.

The standard rate zone, and the point where children stop mattering

Because you pay the lower of two figures, there is a crossover income above which the standard rate always wins. The Hong Kong government publishes it for each family situation and calls it approaching the standard rate zone.

For a single person in 2026/27 it is HK$2,132,500. For a married couple HK$3,365,000. With one child HK$4,555,000, with two HK$6,490,000, with three HK$8,870,000.

Those five numbers are the strongest verification anchor available for any country on this site. Reproducing them requires the progressive scale, the two-tiered standard rate and every allowance amount to be simultaneously correct — get any one wrong and the crossover lands somewhere else. This engine reproduces all five exactly, and there is a test that says so.

The consequence for a household is blunt. Below the zone, an extra child allowance of HK$140,000 reduces the tax. Above it, it reduces nothing at all, because the standard rate calculation does not look at allowances. A high earner in Hong Kong gets no tax relief for their family whatsoever.

That is a deliberate design rather than an oversight: allowances are targeted at the middle, and the standard rate is the ceiling that keeps the system flat at the top.

An effective rate that cannot exceed 16%

The standard rate is not a top band. It is a cap on the whole bill, so the effective rate on a Hong Kong salary converges on 15% and then, very slowly, on 16%. It never passes 16%.

Compare that with the systems immediately around it. Singapore's top rate is 24%, Japan's 45% plus the surtax, mainland China's top is higher still. Hong Kong's ceiling is the lowest of any jurisdiction covered here and it is a hard ceiling rather than a headline.

The second tier is recent. Until 2024/25 the standard rate was a flat 15%; the two-tiered version added 16% above HK$5,000,000 of net income. It is a small change and it is the first crack in a flat top rate that had held for decades.

The base is narrow as well as the rate low. Hong Kong charges salaries tax on employment income, profits tax on business profits and property tax on rental income — three separate taxes on three separate sources, with no aggregation unless you elect personal assessment. There is no capital gains tax, no tax on dividends, no tax on interest, no estate duty, and no sales tax or VAT.

Comparing Hong Kong's 16% with another country's headline rate therefore understates the difference substantially, in the same way it does for Singapore. The rate and the base have to be read together.

Allowances, and what changed for 2026/27

Allowances reduce the income the progressive rates apply to. They are granted rather than claimed in the sense that you assert them on the return, and they are generous by international standards relative to Hong Kong salaries.

The basic allowance rose to HK$145,000 for 2026/27, from HK$132,000 where it had sat since 2020/21. The married person's allowance is exactly twice that at HK$290,000, and it replaces the basic allowance rather than adding to it.

Child allowance rose to HK$140,000 for each of the first nine children, with the same amount again in the year a child is born. A dependent parent or grandparent aged 60 or above is HK$55,000, and the same again as an additional allowance if that person lives with you throughout the year.

There are more that this calculator does not offer: dependent brother or sister at HK$37,500, disabled dependant and personal disability at HK$75,000 each, single parent at HK$145,000, and the reduced dependent parent amounts for ages 55 to 59.

Deductions are a separate category and come off before either calculation: self-education expenses, approved charitable donations, elderly residential care, home loan interest, domestic rent, voluntary health insurance premiums and MPF contributions. None of them is modelled here, so the figure above is an upper bound for anyone claiming any of them.

Four incomes, and which calculation wins

Each figure is net income for a single person with only the basic allowance. The last column is the one that matters: which of the two calculations produced the bill.

On HK$400,000: progressive HK$25,350, standard HK$60,000 — you pay HK$25,350 by the progressive route, an effective rate of 6.3%.

On HK$800,000: progressive HK$93,350, standard HK$120,000 — you pay HK$93,350 by the progressive route, an effective rate of 11.7%.

On HK$2,500,000: progressive HK$382,350, standard HK$375,000 — you pay HK$375,000 by the standard route, an effective rate of 15%.

On HK$8,000,000: progressive HK$1,317,350, standard HK$1,230,000 — you pay HK$1,230,000 by the standard route, an effective rate of 15.4%.

The switch happens at HK$2,132,500 for this household. Below it, allowances and the gentle progressive steps do the work; above it, the flat standard rate takes over and nothing about your family changes the answer.

How Hong Kong compares with the rest of this site

Against Singapore, the obvious comparison, the shapes are opposite. Singapore climbs through twelve gentle steps to 24% with no ceiling; Hong Kong climbs through four steep ones to 17% and then hits a flat cap. Singapore's system is progressive all the way up; Hong Kong's stops being progressive at a defined point.

Against the United Kingdom, the contrast is what a high earner gets for their family. The UK gives a Personal Allowance and withdraws it; Hong Kong gives generous allowances and then simply switches to a calculation that ignores them.

Against the United States, the missing pieces are enormous: no state or local income tax, no payroll tax reaching the employee in the same way, no capital gains tax, no estate tax, no sales tax.

Against Japan, the near neighbour, the difference is the whole architecture. Japan stacks a national scale, a local flat tax and heavy social insurance; Hong Kong has one tax on employment income and an MPF contribution capped at a low ceiling.

What Hong Kong has that nothing else here does is the min-of-two rule itself. It is a genuinely unusual piece of tax design, and it is why a Hong Kong marginal rate can drop from 17% to 15% as income rises rather than the other way round.

Four ways a Hong Kong estimate goes wrong

Applying only the progressive rates. Above the standard rate zone they are the wrong calculation, and they overstate the bill — often by a great deal.

Applying the standard rate to net chargeable income. It applies to net income, before allowances. Using the post-allowance figure understates the standard calculation and can make it win when it should not.

Using the flat 15% standard rate. It became two-tiered from 2024/25: 15% to HK$5,000,000 and 16% above.

Using the 2023/24–2025/26 allowances. The basic allowance went from HK$132,000 to HK$145,000 and the child allowance from HK$130,000 to HK$140,000 for 2026/27, which moves every crossover point.

Territorial source, and the question that decides everything

Hong Kong taxes income arising in or derived from Hong Kong. Not residence, not citizenship, not domicile — source. It is one of the few genuinely territorial systems in a developed economy, and it is a larger part of the Hong Kong story than the rates are.

For employment income the source question turns on where the contract was negotiated and concluded, where the employer is resident, and where the remuneration is paid. Those three factors decide whether an employment is Hong Kong-sourced at all.

Where it is not, only the days worked in Hong Kong are charged, on a time-apportionment basis. Where it is, the whole income is charged even for days worked elsewhere — subject to relief for services rendered wholly outside Hong Kong, and to the sixty-day visitor exemption.

The practical effect is that two people with identical pay and identical travel patterns can face very different Hong Kong tax depending on how their contracts were structured, which is why source is the first question any Hong Kong adviser asks and the last thing a calculator can answer.

This page assumes the whole of the income entered is chargeable to Hong Kong salaries tax. For anyone with a genuinely non-Hong Kong employment, that assumption is the thing to check before the arithmetic.

Personal assessment, and when it is worth electing

Hong Kong charges three separate taxes on three separate sources: salaries tax on employment, profits tax on business, property tax on rental income. They are not added together and there is no general income tax return that aggregates them.

Personal assessment is the election that changes that. It aggregates the three, allows deductions that would otherwise be unavailable — notably interest on money borrowed to produce rental income — and applies salaries tax rates and allowances to the total.

It helps someone whose property tax bill exceeds what the progressive rates would produce, because property tax is charged at the standard rate on 80% of rent with no allowances at all. Someone with a modest salary and a mortgaged rental property is the classic case.

It does not help someone already in the standard rate zone, since the aggregate would be taxed at the standard rate anyway. The election is made annually and the Revenue will not make it for you.

It is not modelled here. This page is salaries tax on employment income alone, which is the case for the large majority of Hong Kong taxpayers.

MPF, the small deduction that is Hong Kong's whole retirement system

The Mandatory Provident Fund takes 5% of relevant income from the employee and 5% from the employer, both between a monthly floor and a monthly ceiling. Above the ceiling, contributions stop.

That ceiling is what makes it small. For a high earner the mandatory contribution is a rounding error against salary, which is a deliberate design and a frequently criticised one: MPF was never intended to fund retirement on its own.

The employee's mandatory contribution is deductible from assessable income up to an annual cap, so it reduces the tax as well as the take-home. Voluntary contributions to a tax-deductible MPF account attract relief up to a further cap.

Neither is applied in the figure on this page, so for anyone contributing, the tax here is slightly overstated and the take-home considerably so.

Compared with Singapore's CPF, which takes 20% of wages from the employee up to a much higher ceiling, MPF is a far lighter obligation — and Hong Kong's public pension provision is correspondingly thinner. It is one of the clearest illustrations that a low-tax jurisdiction is making a choice rather than getting something for nothing.

The Budget rebate, granted most years and never guaranteed

Almost every Hong Kong Budget of the past two decades has waived a share of salaries tax after the fact. The mechanism is a percentage of the tax assessed, capped at a fixed amount per case, applied automatically without a claim.

The pattern of the recent past shows how the amount moves: 100% capped at HK$10,000 for 2020/21 and 2021/22, HK$6,000 for 2022/23, HK$3,000 for 2023/24, HK$1,500 for 2024/25, and HK$3,000 for 2025/26.

Because the cap is flat, the relief is worth proportionally far more to a small bill than a large one. Someone paying HK$3,000 of tax in a year with a HK$3,000 cap pays nothing; someone paying HK$300,000 sees a one per cent discount.

No reduction has been announced for 2026/27 at the date this page was checked, so none is applied. If one is granted in the Budget it will reduce the figure here, and it will be applied to the tax after both calculations have been compared.

It is worth treating as what it is: a recurring but discretionary concession, not a feature of the scale. Building it into a forecast for a year that has not been legislated would be inventing a number.

What Hong Kong does not tax at all

The rate is only half the story, and the base is the other half. Hong Kong has no capital gains tax, no tax on dividends, no tax on bank interest, no estate duty, and no sales tax or VAT.

It also has no tax on income arising outside Hong Kong, for individuals, regardless of remittance. That is a stronger position than Singapore's, which taxes some foreign income received in Singapore, and far stronger than the non-permanent resident rules in Japan.

There is no social security tax in the sense the rest of this site uses the term. MPF is a capped retirement contribution to an account in the member's own name, and there is no employee payroll charge funding health or unemployment.

What is charged instead falls elsewhere: stamp duty on property and share transfers, rates on property occupation, and government land premiums that fund a large share of public spending without appearing on anyone's payslip.

Comparing Hong Kong's 16% ceiling with a European headline rate therefore understates the gap substantially — and comparing the two systems on housing cost narrows it again just as sharply. Neither comparison is complete on its own.

Questions

How much salaries tax do I pay on HK$800,000 in Hong Kong?

HK$93,350 for a single person in 2026/27 — the progressive calculation gives HK$93,350 and the standard rate calculation HK$120,000, and you pay the lower. That is an effective rate of 11.7%.

What are the Hong Kong salaries tax rates?

Two calculations, and you pay the lower. Progressive: 2% on the first HK$50,000 of net chargeable income, then 6%, 10%, 14.0% in HK$50,000 steps and 17% on the remainder. Standard: 15% on the first HK$5,000,000 of net income and 16% above, applied before allowances.

What is the standard rate zone?

The income above which the standard rate calculation always produces the lower figure, so allowances stop having any effect. For 2026/27 it is HK$2,132,500 for a single person, HK$3,365,000 for a married couple, and HK$6,490,000 for a couple with two children.

Can my Hong Kong tax rate ever exceed 17%?

No. The effective rate cannot exceed 16%, because the standard rate calculation caps the whole bill rather than acting as a top band. The 17% progressive rate only ever applies while the progressive calculation is the lower of the two.

How much is the basic allowance for 2026/27?

HK$145,000, raised from HK$132,000. The married person's allowance is HK$290,000 and replaces it; child allowance is HK$140,000 for each of the first nine children, doubled in the year of birth; a dependent parent aged 60 or above is HK$55,000, and the same again if they live with you.

Is MPF deducted from this figure?

No. Mandatory Provident Fund contributions are 5% of relevant income between a floor and a ceiling, withheld from pay, and also deductible from assessable income — so including them would reduce both your take-home and the tax. Neither effect is modelled here.

Is there a tax reduction this year?

None has been announced for 2026/27 at the date this page was checked, so none is applied. The Budget has granted one in most recent years — 100% of tax capped at HK$3,000 for 2025/26 and HK$1,500 for 2024/25 — and it is applied after the tax is computed.

Does Hong Kong tax capital gains or dividends?

No. There is no capital gains tax, no tax on dividends, no tax on bank interest and no estate duty. Salaries tax, profits tax and property tax are charged separately on employment income, business profits and rental income, and are not aggregated unless you elect personal assessment.