Total up every personal allowance you can claim.
Total allowances
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Basic or married
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Child allowances
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Your breakdown
Updates live as you type| Allowance | How it is counted | Amount |
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Allowances are the difference between gross and chargeable income
Hong Kong's progressive salaries tax is not charged on what you earn. It is charged on your net chargeable income, which is your income after deductions and then after personal allowances. Allowances are the second of those two steps, and they are where family circumstances cut your bill. This calculator totals every allowance you can claim so you can feed one clean figure into a tax computation, rather than guessing at a dozen separate amounts. Everyone starts with the basic allowance, and from there your household builds the total up.
It helps to keep the structure in mind. The allowance total is subtracted before the progressive rates of 2 to 17 percent apply, so a larger total pushes more of your income into the lower bands or out of tax altogether. Importantly, allowances only matter under the progressive method; the standard-rate computation ignores them entirely, which is why high earners sometimes see no benefit from them. Treat the specific dollar figures here as the tool's assumptions for 2025/26 and confirm them with the Inland Revenue Department.
The allowances that stack, and the ones that replace
Some allowances add to each other and some substitute. You claim either the basic allowance or, if jointly assessed, the married person's allowance, never both. Child allowances are per child, and in the year a child is born you get an extra amount on top of the ordinary child allowance for that child. Dependent parent and grandparent allowances come at one level normally and double when the relative lives with you throughout the year, so a co-residing parent generates two entries rather than one. There are further allowances for a disabled dependant, your own disability, a single-parent household, and a dependent brother or sister.
A married couple with a new baby and a parent at home
Picture a jointly assessed married couple with two children, one of them born during the year, and one dependent parent aged over 60 who lives with them. The total the calculator builds is shown below.
The $754,000 total is what gets subtracted before the progressive rates apply. The two child entries are easy to misread: the newborn does not replace the ordinary child allowance, it adds to it, so that one child carries $260,000 of allowance in the year of birth.
Common traps and who benefits most
The most frequent error is double-claiming an allowance that the system only lets one person take. A child allowance for a given child can be claimed by one parent, not split freely between two, and a dependent parent can be claimed by only one supporting child in the family. The co-residence boosts also require the relative to live with you continuously through the year, not just visit. And remember the ceiling effect: once your income is high enough that the standard-rate computation produces the lower tax, piling on more allowances changes nothing, because the standard rate disregards them.
This tool is most valuable for families and for anyone supporting elderly parents, where the allowances add up quickly. A single person with no dependants simply has the basic allowance and little to calculate. One reassuring point: these allowances reduce salaries tax only, and Hong Kong has no separate taxes on dividends, savings interest or capital gains to erode the benefit elsewhere, so the saving you compute here is the saving you keep.
Can both parents claim the child allowance for the same child?
No. For each child the allowance is claimed by one parent only. A couple can split different children between them, but they cannot both claim the same child, and jointly assessed couples claim the children together under the one assessment. The IRD expects you to nominate who claims.
Do allowances reduce my tax under the standard rate?
No. Allowances apply only to the progressive computation on net chargeable income. The standard-rate computation is charged on net total income before any allowances, so for a high earner whose tax is set by the standard rate, adding allowances makes no difference to the final bill.