Hong Kong: Tax Transparency Notice

What the client is asked to certify

At onboarding, the client and every controlling person behind it certify each jurisdiction of tax residence and the taxpayer reference issued there. The certification is read against the rest of the file, and a correspondence address, a settlement account or a place of birth pointing somewhere else has to be reconciled before the account opens. A client tells the firm within 30 days of a change in its residence, and the Hong Kong entity requests a fresh certification whenever a change of circumstances shows up in the file. A mandate does not open on an unresolved certification, and a certification that cannot be reconciled closes the account.

What is reported, and to whom

Where an entity in the network is a reporting financial institution, it reports the accounts of clients resident in participating jurisdictions to its own competent authority, which forwards the data to the authority of the client's residence. What is reported is the account holder, the controlling persons, the account identifier, the balance at the year end and the gross amounts credited during the year. Reporting is annual and runs to the deadline the local authority sets. A client may ask IGUAKO Capital (Hong Kong) Limited for a copy of what was reported about it, and the copy is provided.

The local charge to tax

Each domicile has its own charge to tax, its own filing calendar and its own reporting obligations, and the group tax function keeps one return calendar covering all 28.

IGUAKO Capital (Hong Kong) Limited files an annual profits tax return and pays tax at the standard rate on its Hong Kong-sourced advisory and arranging income; the entity claims no offshore exemption on any fee. Hong Kong has no value added tax and no withholding on service fees, so cross-border charges to Singapore and George Town are documented under the group transfer pricing policy without withholding. No account is maintained for a client in Hong Kong, so the entity has nothing of its own to report under the automatic exchange of financial account information; the co-investment vehicles administered by Lantau Fund Services are reporting financial institutions in their own right and report their investors to the Hong Kong revenue authority, which exchanges the data. Investors are told at subscription which vehicle reports. Stamp duty on secondary transfers of Hong Kong securities is paid and the stamped instrument is held on file.

Transfer pricing on funding, services and licences between Hong Kong entities and the rest of the group is documented each year and reviewed by the Group Head of Tax before the return is filed, alongside the returns of the other Asia-Pacific entities.

What the firm will not do

The firm refuses a mandate whose purpose is to hide ownership, income or residence from an authority entitled to know it. It declines a request to invoice a party other than the one that received the service, to route a payment through an entity with no part in the transaction, or to describe a distribution as something it is not. Contracts with introducers, agents and other associated persons carry a clause forbidding facilitation, a right to ask how the work was done and a right to end the appointment on notice. The firm gives no tax advice, and the team in Hong Kong says so in writing before the first mandate is signed.

A structure that works only because a tax authority cannot see it is not a structure the firm will build. Where a client wants a view on its own position, the firm asks it to take that advice independently and records on the file that it did so.