Acting Secretary for Financial Services & the Treasury Joseph Chan welcomed the passage of the Inland Revenue (Amendment) (Child Allowance & Tax Concessions) Bill 2023 by the Legislative Council today.

The passage of the bill gives effect to two proposals in the 2023-24 Budget. One of them entails the reduction of salaries tax, tax under personal assessment and profits tax for the year of assessment 2022-23 by 100%, subject to a ceiling of $6,000 per case.

The other proposal involves increasing the basic child allowance and the additional child allowance for each child born under salaries tax and tax under personal assessment from $120,000 to $130,000, starting from the 2023-24 year of assessment.

Mr Chan noted that the one-off tax concessions will benefit about 1.9 million taxpayers of salaries tax and tax under personal assessment and 133,500 tax-paying businesses, with the government revenue forgone amounting to about $9.2 billion.

The increase in child allowance will benefit around 324,000 taxpayers and reduce the tax revenue of the Government by about $610 million a year, he added.

The tax concessions will be reflected in taxpayers' final tax payable for the year of assessment 2022-23. Meanwhile, the new level of child allowance will be applied when calculating the provisional tax for taxpayers for the 2023-24 year of assessment.