The Financial Secretary has announced the 2024-25 Budget. Highlights as below:

On Property Market:
• Special Stamp Duty, Buyers’ Stamp Duty and New Residential Stamp Duty for residential properties with immediate effect

On Stock Market:
• Introduce treasury share buy-back regime and maintain trading operations under severe weather: targeting to implement in mid 2024
• Explore measures to enhance listing regime, improve transaction mechanism, boost investor services, step up market promotion, etc.

On Assisting Small and Medium Enterprises
• SME Financing Guarantee Scheme: extend application period for 80% and 90% Guarantee Products till end March 2026
• BUD Fund: inject $500 million with launch of “E-commerce Easy". Provide up to $1 million per enterprise for implementing e-commerce projects in the Mainland

On Supporting People and Enterprises
• Rates concession for domestic properties for the first quarter of 2024/25, subject to a $1,000 ceiling
• Rates concession for non-domestic properties for the first quarter of 2024/25, subject to a $1,000 ceiling
• Reduce salaries tax and tax under personal assessment for the assessment year 2023/24 by 100%, subject to a $3,000 ceiling
• Reduce profits tax for the assessment year 2023/24 by 100%, subject to a $3,000 ceiling

On Finance
issue $70 billion worth of retail bonds:
• Silver bonds: $50 billion
• Green bonds and Infrastructure bonds: $20 billion

On Trade
• Multinational supply chain management centre:
Provide consulting services, trade financing and corporate training
Study the establishment of trade single window to provide one-stop services for enterprises
Attract Mainland manufacturing enterprises to set up offshore trading management headquarters in Hong Kong
• Explore new markets:
consider establishing Economic and Trade Offices in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

On Intellectual Property Trading
• Introduce legislative proposal to implement "patent box" tax incentive. Profit tax rate to be reduced to 5%

On Increasing Revenue
• Business registration fee to be increased by $200 to $2,200 per annum from 1 April 2024. Businsss registration levy of $150 will be waived for 2 years
• Proposed two-tier standard rates regime for salaries tax and tax under personal assessment: affecting only taxpayers with over $5 million net income and whose tax payable is calculated at standard rate. Taxpayers on progressive rates will not be affected.
Proposed tax rates for net income above $5 million:
First $5 million: 15%, Protion exceeding $5 million: 16%