When someone sets up their first Hong Kong company, they usually get handed a quote covering seven things they've never bought before. Company secretary. Registered office. Audit. Profits tax return. Payroll. Advisory. Trademark.
And there's no easy way to tell which of those the law insists on, which are genuinely useful, and which are just padding on an invoice.
So here's the map. What Hong Kong requires from you, what's worth adding as the business grows, and what each layer tends to cost. None of it is complicated once somebody lays it out honestly.
The three things you can't skip
Every active Hong Kong company has to have all three of these. It doesn't matter whether you turn over five thousand dollars or five million.
- A company secretary. Either someone who ordinarily lives in Hong Kong, or a firm holding a TCSP licence. If you're the only director, you can't do this job yourself.
- A registered office in Hong Kong. A real address here where official post can reach you. Not a PO box.
- An annual audit. Your accounts have to be audited by a Hong Kong CPA. There's no small company exemption. Only a genuinely dormant company gets out of it.
On top of that, three filings come round on a schedule. The annual return to the Companies Registry, the profits tax return to the Inland Revenue Department, and an employer's return once you've got staff.
That's the floor. Everything after this is a choice.
The audit catches almost everyone out. If you're coming from the UK, Ireland or Australia, you're used to small companies filing unaudited accounts. Hong Kong doesn't work that way. Budget for an audit from year one.
Company secretarial, the cheapest thing on the list
Your company secretary keeps the statutory registers accurate, files the annual return, and makes sure what's on the public record at the Companies Registry matches reality.
Most people outsource it, usually bundled with the registered address, and it usually costs somewhere between HKD 1,000 and HKD 3,000 a year. At that price, the fee isn't the interesting bit.
What actually separates a good secretary from a bad one is whether anyone is watching your deadlines. A cheap provider who forgets your annual return has cost you far more than the few hundred dollars you saved. I've picked up plenty of companies whose old provider was technically doing the job and practically asleep.
Accounting, audit and tax, the biggest line
This is where most of your compliance budget goes, and it's really three jobs that feed into each other.
Bookkeeping keeps your records straight through the year. The audit tests those records and produces signed accounts. The profits tax return reports the result to the IRD with the audited accounts attached.
Because each step runs on the one before it, splitting them between three providers creates a lot of avoidable hassle. You end up chasing your bookkeeper for a file your auditor needs, then chasing your auditor for a report your tax agent needs. Keeping them together is usually cheaper in time even when it isn't cheaper in fees.
For a straightforward trading company, audit and tax filing together normally land in the low tens of thousands of Hong Kong dollars a year. Complexity pushes that up. Multiple currencies, stock, group structures and offshore claims all add work.
Payroll and MPF, the month that never stops
Nothing changes until you hire your first person. Then a monthly cycle starts and it never stops.
Salaries go out. Payslips get issued. MPF contributions are due by the 10th of the following month. And the IRD needs telling when somebody joins, when they leave, and what everyone earned over the year.
Payroll services run all of that for a monthly fee per employee. With one member of staff you can reasonably do it yourself. By the fifth, the odds of a quiet mistake repeating itself all year get high enough that most founders hand it over.
Advisory, bought at decisions rather than by the month
Compliance is a subscription. Advice isn't.
You buy advice at the moments that matter. Before you restructure, before you raise money, before you claim offshore status, before you go into the mainland. It's forward-looking work, and its value depends almost entirely on timing.
The founders who get real value out of it call before they sign something. The ones who get very little call afterwards, when the structure is already fixed and the options have closed. One well-timed conversation about an offshore claim or a holding structure will often save more than years of the fee.
If there's a big, hard-to-reverse decision sitting on your desk right now, that's your signal.
Trademarks and IP, cheap and almost always skipped
Your brand is only an asset if you registered it. Until then it's just a name you happen to be using.
Registering a trademark in Hong Kong costs HKD 2,000 in official fees for one class, and it lasts ten years. You can renew it forever. Set against everything else on this page, that's rounding error.
This also covers the unglamorous stuff. Contractor agreements that genuinely hand ownership of the work to your company instead of assuming it. Design registration. Separate filings in mainland China if your brand crosses the border, because it doesn't carry over on its own.
It's the cheapest section of this guide and the one people put off longest. File while the brand is still too small to be worth copying.
The occasional ones
A few services you buy once, for a specific event, then not again for years.
Business valuations back up share transfers, stamp duty adjudication, fundraising and the odd dispute. ESG reporting answers the questionnaires that banks and big corporate customers keep sending their private suppliers. Deregistration closes a company down cleanly when it's run its course.
You won't need any of these often. The only useful thing today is knowing they exist, so the event doesn't arrive as a shock.
How to buy this well
Three rules, and they hold for nearly every company I work with.
Keep the connected things together. Bookkeeping, audit, tax and payroll all run off the same numbers. One provider means one version of the truth and a lot less chasing. Genuine one-offs, like a valuation, can sit anywhere you like.
Pay for attention, not just processing. Anyone can file a form. The value is in somebody noticing that your year end is badly timed, or that your offshore claim needs documenting now rather than at audit. Missed deadlines cost far more than the gap between a cheap provider and a good one.
Match the layer to the stage. A new company needs the floor and nothing else. A growing one adds payroll, then advice. A more established one adds IP and starts thinking about valuation. Buying the full stack on day one is a waste of money.
When you're comparing quotes, ask three things. What exactly is included, what counts as extra, and who specifically answers when you email. That last answer tells you the most.
The short version
Hong Kong splits into three tiers. A floor you have to have: company secretary, registered office, audit and filings. A growth layer of payroll and advice that you add when the business earns it. And a handful of specialists you call once and then forget about.
Get the floor right, add the rest in order, and keep the connected pieces under one roof. That really is the whole thing.
Common questions
What's the legal minimum for a Hong Kong company?
A company secretary, a registered office address in Hong Kong, and an annual audit by a Hong Kong CPA. Plus the annual return, the profits tax return, and an employer's return once you have staff.
What should all this cost?
Company secretarial packages usually run HKD 1,000 to 3,000 a year. Audit and tax for a simple company normally start in the low tens of thousands annually. Payroll is priced per employee per month. Advisory and trademark work get quoted per job. Jan's pricing is published as fixed figures rather than ranges, so you can compare properly.
Is the audit really unavoidable?
Yes, unless the company is dormant in the formal sense, meaning no accounting transactions at all for the year. Being small, new or loss-making doesn't get you out of it.
Should I use one provider or several?
Keep anything that shares data together: bookkeeping, audit, tax and payroll. Independent one-offs like valuations can sit with a specialist without causing you any trouble.
When is it worth paying for advice?
At decision points, and before the decision rather than after. Restructuring, fundraising, offshore claims and cross-border expansion are the four that most often justify it.
How do I tell a good provider from a cheap one?
Ask who personally answers your questions, and whether they track your deadlines or wait for you to raise them. Active deadline tracking is the clearest signal there is.