Expat trapped in HK over unpaid tax bill

While millions in tax revenue is written off each year as a result of expatriates fleeing the city, the experience of one Briton proves that getting on the wrong side of the Inland Revenue Department is not recommended. Bill Heywood, a plumbing and piping contractor, was stopped at Hong Kong International Airport last September when he was leaving the city after a three-week holiday. He was told by immigration officials that he could not leave until he had settled his bill for HK$50,782. He has now been stuck in the city for a year, unable to pay the bill and yet unable to find a job and escape his plight. Taxpayers who leave Hong Kong without paying are estimated to have cost the government more than HK$140 million over the past five fiscal years. In 2008-09, HK$13 million was written off the government books. And following criticism from the Director of Audit that the Inland Revenue Department was losing millions of dollars in tax revenue, procedures have been tightened to secure payments before taxpayers leave and to chase up defaulters. A spokeswoman for the department said a taxpayer's obligation to pay tax would not be relieved through time. And the law does not allow him or her to work to pay off the debt. 'Where the taxpayer has left Hong Kong [without having cleared his tax bill], IRD may apply to the District Court to have a 'departure prevention direction' issued, so that he will be stopped from departing Hong Kong,' the spokeswoman explained. Heywood said he wanted to find work to pay for the debt, as he did not have enough cash left at the end of his holiday. 'But the Immigration Department staff won't give me a work permit. I have talked to them many times, and each time they said I couldn't get one.' The IRD spokeswoman said 'the issue of a work permit is not within the purview of IRD'. To obtain a visa, Heywood was told he must first have a job offer. The Immigration Department said a work permit may be issued to an expatriate applicant if he had no serious criminal record and a degree or otherwise good technical or professional qualifications. And there should be a genuine job vacancy and a confirmed offer for a job that could not be readily taken up by the local workforce. Heywood managed to raise half the amount needed from friends, but that was not enough to persuade tax officials to lift the ban on departure. The spokeswoman said a taxpayer could explore possible solutions with the IRD if he had 'genuine difficulties' in meeting his tax obligations. 'He can furnish satisfactory guarantees or pay by instalments,' she said. 'Where circumstances warrant, IRD may consider temporarily uplifting the departure prevention direction to allow the taxpayer to depart Hong Kong for a specific purpose.' Heywood said he had made that suggestion, but was rejected. Now 57, he came to the city in 1996 and worked on a number of building projects, including the airport terminal at Chek Lap Kok, and Kowloon Station. He set up his own contracting company in 2000 and ran it until he left the city at the end of 2003 for another venture in Egypt. When Heywood visited the city in 2006, he experienced no such hiccups. But then a court authorised the police and the Immigration Department to prevent him leaving Hong Kong one year later. '[It] is in the public interest to ensure the aforesaid person does not depart from Hong Kong ... again, without first paying the tax ... to the satisfaction of the Commissioner of Inland Revenue,' the court order said. Heywood said he left without realising he had outstanding tax obligations. 'They sent me the tax bills to my old address at Shelley Street and my ex-wife's in England. But I was no longer living there. And they did not bother to send the letters to me,' he said. After a year stranded in the city, Heywood still sees no way out, with sympathy and subsistence from his friends slowly running out. And just when he thought he had begun to see a light at the end of the tunnel, he has run into more legal hurdles. 'My friend has now offered me a job,' he said. 'I wrote to the Immigration Department a couple of weeks ago for permission to work.' The problem now is that Heywood's visa has expired. He was last allowed to stay until April, but Heywood said he did not seek further extensions because he could not afford the fees. 'I asked for a longer extension to sort things out, but they only gave me one month and they charge me HK$160 each time,' he said. 'I don't have HK$160 to pay each month.' While declining to comment on Heywood's situation, the Immigration Department spokeswoman said people who had breached their conditions of stay, including overstayers, would be repatriated as soon as possible, or, if they were prosecuted for overstaying, after they had served their sentence. She would not comment on whether the court order or the immigration law comes first in Heywood's case. She said the court would decide.