Subsidies for Hong Kong commuters, huge cuts to profits tax to be announced in Carrie Lam’s policy address
Public transport commuters who spend at least HK$400 per month on travel with their Octopus cards will receive as much as HK$300
Hong Kong’s public transport commuters will be given a monthly travel subsidy of as much as HK$300 in an initiative set to be announced on Wednesday morning in Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s maiden policy address, the Post has learned.
Local business operators will also benefit, with the profits tax rate for their first HK$2 million in profits set to be halved to 8.25 per cent.
The size of the subsidies will depend on travel expenditure with an upper limit of HK$300, according to the source. It will not be a means-tested scheme.
Lam will give the details of the initiative on Wednesday.
The government holds about 75 per cent of MTR Corp’s shares, and receives about HK$4 billion in annual dividends.
The subsidy scheme, pledged by Lam during the chief executive election campaign earlier this year, is aimed at easing transport burden costs felt by grass-roots workers.
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At a campaign rally, Lam had said she expected “hundreds of thousands” of Hongkongers to benefit from the initiative and that it would demonstrate her “new fiscal philosophy”.
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“My intention is to reduce the tax burdens on start-ups and SMEs, but to do it without changing the very simple tax system. It’s likely to take this form: for the first HK$2 million of profits of every business, we will charge a rate lower than 16.5 per cent,” she said at the time.
She added that she was working very hard to see if she could go lower than 10 per cent.
Eddy Li Sau-hung, president of the Chinese Manufacturers’ Association welcomed the measure to lower profits tax for businesses.
“It is a timely measure to ease the pressure of small businesses who have been struggling from the expensive operational costs and fiercer competition from other markets,” he said.
The move would also accelerate the economic transformation in Hong Kong by nurturing more technology-driven start-ups, Li said.
