Hong Kong’s Inland Revenue Department (IRD) will expand the tax filing service, so that a company or partnership meeting certain conditions can file its profits tax return for 2009/10, which is issued on or after April 1, 2010, through the Internet.

The conditions will include a specification that its gross income does not exceed HKD2m (USD257,500) and that it does not have any assessable profits from interest or other profit/loss arising from medium-term debt.

Other conditions include the following:

• The business should not be claiming a foreign tax credit;
• It should not have obtained an advance ruling on any tax matter relating to that year of assessment; and
• It must not have paid or accrued to a non-resident any sum for the use of intellectual property.

If the business is a partnership, it has to have been carried on by not more than six partners during the year of assessment, and all of those partners must have been individuals.

Further details are to be announced by the IRD in late March this year.