Declaring dividends on self assesment?

Ark_Welder

Singapore has a much higher debt ratio

cinderfella

Sounds as if the OP has a lot to thank the UK for in Hong Kong. Infrastructure, financial system including stock exchange. Laws, education all developed by the British and transferred with assurances to China for the first 50 years.
Still, its a changing world & we all have to adapt to those changes.
Well done UK we can be proud of our achievements.
:beer:

Randvegeta

Nice one Ark Welder. Indeed it is Hong Kong. The land of low tax, excellent infrastructure, and generally a good place to be all round.

One thing I love about England that I can't get cheaply in HK is food. Quality food in HK is expensive, simply because it's all imported. But hey, it's made up for in low income/corporate TAX, 0% sales and import TAX, and all the free public services. I must say, I do like the idea of a TAX cap. No progressive TAX for HKers :P. Fair!

Ark_Welder

...all of which is why you have a UK passport and not a HK one.

Or is that just the Beijing influence?

Randvegeta

Huh? No my Dad is British. And of course I was born under British rule. I would have either held British Citizenship at birth, or a BNO. Of course now Beijin consider me a citizen but I loath to think that is true. LOL.

Yes the Brits did well in HK. Shame they couldn't do the same or similar in England. What a !!!!-up!

John_Pierpoint

Trouble with Hong Kong is that it feels like living in an ant heap with shopping as the national sport.

John_Pierpoint

cinderfella wrote: »

Sounds as if the OP has a lot to thank the UK for in Hong Kong. Infrastructure, financial system including stock exchange. Laws, education all developed by the British and transferred with assurances to China for the first 50 years.
Still, its a changing world & we all have to adapt to those changes.
Well done UK we can be proud of our achievements.
:beer:

A bit like the set up created in Japan by the Yanks after WW2.
Somehow it is easier to introduce reforms in someone else's country than in your own.

Randvegeta

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

A bit like the set up created in Japan by the Yanks after WW2.
Somehow it is easier to introduce reforms in someone else's country than in your own.

Seems so. Only Japan has huge debt and was a thriving Nation long before the yanks got there.

Hong Kong was virtually empty (at least relative to now) at the time the Brits annexed it from China.

BTW, I live in the country side, not the main City. Open, fresh air, wild cows (seriously). Not the crowded ant heap you would expect.

John_Pierpoint

I think most of Japan's debts were run up by failure to restructure its economy during the "lost decade", as its banking system was allowed to retain "non performing" loans (Hmm sounds familiar).
Japan was absolutely flattened by high level bombing and two nuclear explosions which made Dresden look like a pic nic - but they got zero sympathy at the end of WW2 because of the way their "empire" had treated their conquered nations.
(The Americans were sick of fighting island by island against suicide fighters and they wanted to get the job finished before Uncle Joe arrived from the West. Soviet troops had advanced 5,000 miles into Europe in the time it took the British and the Americans to advance 500).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo

This looks to me like a work of scholarship, teasing out the totals by nation for WW2 deaths.
http://necrometrics.com/ww2stats.htm
(It ignores the deaths in China caused by the later civil war and general chaos:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao:_The_Unknown_Story#Number_of_deaths_under_Mao)

I don't know if you will accept these figures as definitive ?
To me they show economic growth, fuelled by mass migration into an economy where the rule of law plus free enterprise was able to generate a vast increase in GDP (and in this case GDP per head).
http://www.demographia.com/db-hkhist.htm

Mind you that is not a simple recipe for economic "success" - It has not worked too well in say Peru - up from a population of 600K in the 1600's to 2,676,000 in 1876 (under estimate, cf Inca empire?) to about 30 million now. Mostly living in shanty town conditions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Peru
http://books.mongabay.com/population_estimates/full/Lima-Peru.html

http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_pop_grow&idim=country:PER&dl=en&hl=en&q=peru+population+growth#ctype=l&strail=false&nselm=h&met_y=sp_pop_grow&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:PER:HKG:GBR&tdim=true&hl=en&dl=en

My personal knowledge of Hong Kong is based on visits to the down town area (and the airport !) and those of my brother in law, who lived there for several years 25 - 30 years ago. He found the down town area over crowded and the new territories expensive for what they were (like pensioners in UK he had to think twice about turning on the air conditioning). Nice place to live if you are a rich banker with access to a yacht or a visitor - otherwise hot, overcrowded and worried about the competition from Shanghai.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_cities_for_expatriate_employees
(Amazing what a difference the Gordon Brown devaluation of Sterling has made)

Randvegeta

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

I think most of Japan's debts were run up by failure to restructure its economy during the "lost decade", as its banking system was allowed to retain "non performing" loans (Hmm sounds familiar).
Japan was absolutely flattened by high level bombing and two nuclear explosions which made Dresden look like a pic nic - but they got zero sympathy at the end of WW2 because of the way their "empire" had treated their conquered nations.
(The Americans were sick of fighting island by island against suicide fighters and they wanted to get the job finished before Uncle Joe arrived from the West. Soviet troops had advanced 5,000 miles into Europe in the time it took the British and the Americans to advance 500).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo

This looks to me like a work of scholarship, teasing out the totals by nation for WW2 deaths.
http://necrometrics.com/ww2stats.htm
(It ignores the deaths in China caused by the later civil war and general chaos:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao:_The_Unknown_Story#Number_of_deaths_under_Mao)

I don't know if you will accept these figures as definitive ?
To me they show economic growth, fuelled by mass migration into an economy where the rule of law plus free enterprise was able to generate a vast increase in GDP (and in this case GDP per head).
http://www.demographia.com/db-hkhist.htm

Mind you that is not a simple recipe for economic "success" - It has not worked too well in say Peru - up from a population of 600K in the 1600's to 2,676,000 in 1876 (under estimate, cf Inca empire?) to about 30 million now. Mostly living in shanty town conditions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Peru
http://books.mongabay.com/population_estimates/full/Lima-Peru.html

http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_pop_grow&idim=country:PER&dl=en&hl=en&q=peru+population+growth#ctype=l&strail=false&nselm=h&met_y=sp_pop_grow&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:PER:HKG:GBR&tdim=true&hl=en&dl=en

My personal knowledge of Hong Kong is based on visits to the down town area (and the airport !) and those of my brother in law, who lived there for several years 25 - 30 years ago. He found the down town area over crowded and the new territories expensive for what they were (like pensioners in UK he had to think twice about turning on the air conditioning). Nice place to live if you are a rich banker with access to a yacht or a visitor - otherwise hot, overcrowded and worried about the competition from Shanghai.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_cities_for_expatriate_employees
(Amazing what a difference the Gordon Brown devaluation of Sterling has made)

I don't think Shanghai pose that great a threat with regards to the financial sector... shipping yes, but not much else.

Your brother, would have been an expat living an expat life style. Yes HK is terribly expensive for an expat. Even today, property in Hong Kong is amongst the most expensive in the world. Good luck buying a small flat in central for under 2,000,000 GBP :-).

In fact, high property prices is how the government make so much money. But that's not to say many live in squalor.

Over half of Hong Kong's population live in government provided / built accommodation. Of course they pay rent (or equiv), but it is at an affordable rate.

And yes, western food is expensive, simply because it's all imported. But get local food (and that includes mainland Chinese imports), and you can buy food on the cheap.

Personally, I live in an expat type area and eat imported western food, but hey, with all the TAX breaks, and cheap shopping, I can afford it! YEAH!