The accounting setup checklist for a new Hong Kong company

1. Choose your financial year-end deliberately

Your first real decision. Most Hong Kong companies pick 31 December or 31 March, because those year-ends earn the longest filing extensions under the IRD's block extension scheme: a December year-end typically files the following August, a March year-end the following November. A year-end chosen carelessly (say, the incorporation month) can leave you with the shortest possible deadline every single year.

2. Open the books on day one

The Inland Revenue Ordinance requires records sufficient to ascertain your profits, kept for at least seven years, and your first profits tax return, arriving around 18 months after incorporation, covers everything since day one. Set up a real double-entry ledger before the first transaction, not after the first year. Every receipt, invoice and contract gets kept from the start; reconstructing month one in month eighteen is the single most common (and most expensive) new-company mistake.

3. Separate the money immediately

Open a dedicated business bank account and run everything through it. Mixing personal and company money doesn't just make the bookkeeping miserable; it makes the eventual audit slower and more expensive, because every mixed transaction has to be explained.

4. Register for MPF when you first hire

Your first employee (including yourself, if employed by the company) generally must be enrolled in an MPF scheme within 60 days. Employer and employee each contribute 5% of relevant income up to the monthly cap. Miss the 60-day window and surcharges follow.

5. Know the deadlines already ticking

• Annual return (NAR1): due within 42 days of each incorporation anniversary, starting with the first.
• Business registration renewal: annually (or three-yearly), from the IRD.
• First profits tax return: around month 18, with audited financial statements behind it.
• First audit: required for the financial statements of every Hong Kong-incorporated company; engage an auditor before the year closes, not after.
• Employer's Return: each April once you have employees.

6. Decide who owns the calendar

Every deadline above is knowable on day one. Companies get into trouble not because the rules are complex but because no one owns the calendar. Whether it's a founder, an accountant or software: one owner, both clocks (incorporation anniversary and year-end), written down.

General information current as of mid-2026. This is not legal, tax or accounting advice. Deadlines and thresholds change; confirm the current position with the IRD, the Companies Registry, the MPFA or a licensed practitioner.