Hong Kong Tax Deadlines for 2026

What are the main Hong Kong tax deadlines for 2026?

If you run a Hong Kong company, four filings drive your 2026 calendar: the Profits Tax Return (PTR), the Employer's Return (BIR56A), the Individual Tax Return (BIR60), and the Companies Registry annual return (NAR1). The first three come from the Inland Revenue Department (IRD). The last one comes from the Companies Registry and runs on its own clock with harsher late fees.

The IRD issued the bulk of 2025/26 returns at the start of April 2026. About 270,000 Profits Tax Returns and 340,000 Employer's Returns went out on 1 April 2026, with around 2.77 million individual returns following on 4 May 2026.

Here is the short version, then the detail.

When is the Hong Kong Profits Tax Return due in 2026?

The IRD issues Profits Tax Returns on the first working day of April each year. For the 2025/26 year of assessment, that was 1 April 2026. The base rule is simple: you have one month from the date of issue to file.

Almost nobody files in one month, and they don't have to. If you appoint a tax representative (an accountant or tax agent), you fall under the IRD's Block Extension Scheme. The extension you get depends on your company's financial year-end, which the IRD sorts into three accounting date codes.

Hong Kong block extension dates by accounting code (2025/26)

The Commissioner of Inland Revenue set the 2025/26 dates in a circular letter to tax representatives dated 19 March 2026. Here is what those dates work out to.

A few things worth knowing. Code N gets the least room, because those year-ends are oldest by the time April comes around. Code D, a calendar-year close on 31 December, lands in mid-August. Code M, the popular 31 March close, runs all the way to mid-November. If a code M company posted a loss for the year, the IRD pushes its return to 1 February 2027, and there is no extra e-filing month on top of that loss-case date.

The "further e-filing extension" column is the IRD nudging companies toward electronic filing. File your PTR electronically and you can get an extra month. That extra month is not automatic for everyone: voluntary e-filers must also submit their financial statements in iXBRL format to qualify, while companies that are required to e-file get the month as standard. From 1 April 2026, tax representatives must also lodge their block extension applications electronically, and the IRD is moving more firms onto mandatory e-filing.

One caution: these dates move by a few days every year because the IRD anchors them to working days, not fixed calendar dates. The N-code date for 2025/26, for example, was pushed from 1 May to 4 May because of a public holiday. The dates above are correct for returns issued in April 2026. For any other year, check the current circular at ird.gov.hk before you commit. We calendar these per client and rebuild the schedule each April when the new circular drops.

When is the Employer's Return (BIR56A) due?

The Employer's Return, Form BIR56A, is issued to employers on the first working day of April. For 2026 that was 1 April. You file it within one month of issue, so the practical deadline was early May 2026.

The BIR56A reports the pay of everyone on your books for the year ended 31 March, using the supporting IR56B forms for each employee. You must file even if you have no employees to report, in which case you mark it as a nil return with no IR56B forms attached. The IRD does not run a block extension for employer's returns the way it does for profits tax, so treat the one-month window as firm. You can prepare and submit the IR56 forms online through the IRD's Employer's Return e-Filing Services.

When is the Individual Tax Return (BIR60) due?

The IRD issued individual tax returns, Form BIR60, on 4 May 2026. The base deadline is one month from issue, so on or before 4 June 2026.

There are two carve-outs:

• If you are a sole proprietor of an unincorporated business, your deadline runs three months, to 4 August 2026.
• If you file electronically, you get an automatic one-month extension. That moves general cases to 4 July 2026 and sole proprietors to 4 September 2026.

The BIR60 captures your salary, rent from property you own personally, and profits from a sole proprietorship. It is also where you elect personal assessment if that helps your position. As with the employer's return, you have to file even with nothing to report.

When is the Companies Registry annual return (NAR1) due?

This is the deadline founders miss most, because it has nothing to do with tax and nothing to do with your year-end. The annual return, Form NAR1, goes to the Companies Registry. For a local private company it is due within 42 days of the company's incorporation anniversary. A company incorporated on 10 June must file its NAR1 by around 22 July every year. (Public companies and companies limited by guarantee use a different trigger tied to their financial year-end, so the 42-day rule here is the private-company rule that most founder-run businesses fall under.)

The NAR1 is a snapshot of your company: directors, registered office, shareholders, and share capital. The Registrar of Companies cannot extend the 42-day window and cannot waive the late fee. That is the part that stings. Miss the date and the fee climbs fast.

On time it costs HK$105. Late, it runs up to HK$3,480, and that is before any prosecution risk for the company and its officers. Because the trigger is your incorporation date, not the tax year, it is easy to let it slip if no one owns the calendar.

What about Business Registration renewal and provisional tax?

Business Registration. Every Hong Kong business needs a valid Business Registration Certificate from the IRD, renewed annually (or every three years). From 1 April 2026, the one-year fee is HK$2,200 plus a HK$150 Protection of Wages on Insolvency Fund levy, so HK$2,350 in total. The levy had been waived for two years; the 2026/27 Budget brought it back. The renewal demand note is sent before your certificate expires, and the certificate must stay current for the life of the business.

Provisional profits tax. Hong Kong taxes you on the current year using last year's profit as an estimate, then trues it up later. The IRD usually issues the demand note in the later part of the year, around November to December, though the exact timing depends on when your assessment is raised. Payment is split into two installments, about 75% first and 25% second, with the exact due dates printed on your demand note. The first installment commonly falls around January and the second around April, but those months are typical, not fixed.

You can apply to hold over provisional tax, but not just because you would rather not pay it. The main ground is that your assessable profits for the year are, or are expected to be, less than 90% of the amount you were assessed on for the prior year. Other grounds include ceasing business, electing personal assessment, or having an objection in progress. The application has to be in writing, no later than 28 days before the due date or 14 days after the demand note is issued, whichever is later.

What happens if you file or pay late in Hong Kong?

Late filing is not a gentle reminder situation. Under section 80(2) of the Inland Revenue Ordinance, the IRD can prosecute, with a fine of HK$10,000 plus a further penalty of up to three times the tax undercharged. In practice, section 80(2) mostly bites where there is an incorrect return or a failure to comply with a filing notice. A simple late return with no understatement is usually handled by compounding the offence for a fixed sum, or by additional tax under section 82A, which can also reach treble the tax involved. The legal ceiling is real either way, so do not treat the deadline as soft.

On the payment side, miss a tax due date and the IRD can add a 5% surcharge on the unpaid amount. If the tax is still outstanding six months after the due date, a further 10% can be added, calculated on the unpaid tax plus the 5% already imposed. Both figures are statutory maximums, not automatic flat rates. The NAR1 late fees above sit entirely separately and stack on top.

The pattern across all of these is the same: the cost of being late is far higher than the cost of being organized. None of these deadlines are hard to hit. They are just easy to forget, because they fire on different triggers (1 April, 4 May, your incorporation date, your year-end) and land in different mailboxes. For a founder running a US$3M-plus e-commerce business across Shopify, Amazon, and a stack of payment processors, the filing itself is rarely the hard part. Owning the calendar is. That is the work we take off your plate: we map every code, date, and demand note to your specific entity and file on time, every time.

How the codes connect to your year-end

If you are choosing or reviewing a year-end, the accounting code matters for cash flow and for breathing room. A 31 March close, code M, buys you the most filing time and is the most common choice in Hong Kong for that reason. A 31 December close, code D, lines your Hong Kong reporting up with a US parent's calendar year, which can be worth the earlier August deadline if it keeps your group accounts clean. Pick deliberately, then let the deadline schedule fall out of it. The year-end you choose also feeds into other decisions, like whether you qualify for small-company audit exemption and how your e-commerce profits are reported.

One more thing, because it comes up constantly with cross-border e-commerce founders. Hong Kong taxes profits on a territorial basis, which means profits sourced outside Hong Kong can fall outside the net. That does not make offshore profits automatically tax-free. An offshore claim is not a checkbox: it needs genuine substance behind it and has to be accepted by the IRD, often after an enquiry. If you are weighing where to base your operations, our piece on whether Hong Kong is a tax haven walks through what the territorial rule does and does not get you.

This article is general information current for returns issued in April 2026. It is not tax advice, and block extension dates, fees, and rules can change from year to year. Confirm the current figures against the IRD and Companies Registry, and speak to your adviser, before you rely on any specific deadline. If you want a hand mapping your own filing calendar, book a complimentary tax audit.