Which housing arrangement pays you more?
Enter your annual pretax income, rent, and (optionally) the employer's rental cap to compare ordinary salary with an illustrative housing package. The cap limits the rent covered; any excess stays out of pocket.
Enter your numbers
Use your full annual package, rent, and any employer reimbursement ceiling. Figures stay on your device.
This models an employer-set ceiling on the housing allowance, not the IRD's 4%/8%/10% rental-value rate.
Compare the two paths
Scenario A: your full income remains taxable and you pay rent from it. Scenario B: only rent covered by the employer cap is carved out, then the applicable IRD rental value is added to the remaining salary.
You pay rent from your salary
Employer provides the housing
Approximate salaries tax for 2026/27
Full-year estimate for 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027, after the basic allowance. Other deductions and allowances are excluded.
Break-even rent
The annual rent where tax on this capped housing package matches tax on your actual income.
How this is calculated
Illustrative only — not tax advice. Uses simplified, single-filer assumptions for the 2026/27 year of assessment.
- Scenario A treats your full annual pretax income as taxable salary. You pay rent from that salary; no separate domestic rent deduction is assumed.
- Scenario B is an illustrative employer-controlled salary-package model. The selected employer cap limits covered rent; only that covered amount is removed from cash salary. Any excess rent remains an out-of-pocket expense after Scenario B tax. The applicable IRD rental value is then added to the remaining salary.
- The employer cap is separate from the IRD rental-value rate. IRD guidance describes accommodation-dependent rates of 4% / 8% / 10%; this calculator uses 10% for a residential-unit illustration and does not decide which rate applies.
- This is not a universal government rental reimbursement program. Real treatment depends on employer control, eligibility, documentation, accommodation type, the reimbursement limit, IRD acceptance, and the IRD Assessor's view. Civil Service Bureau housing benefits are separate eligibility-based schemes for civil servants.
- A partial reimbursement paid on top of unchanged salary is not modelled here; it requires a separate IRD treatment and must not be read into this salary-package formula.
- Both scenarios apply Hong Kong salaries tax at whichever is lower: the progressive rates (2% / 6% / 10% / 14% / 17% on each HK$50,000 band) after allowances, or the two-tiered standard rate (15% up to HK$5,000,000 of net income, 16% above) before allowances. No one-off 2025/26 tax reduction is included.
- Other allowances and deductions — MPF contributions, the separate domestic rent deduction, dependants, self-education expenses, and married person's allowance — are not modelled. Your actual liability will differ if any of these apply.
Official sources behind these estimates
Primary government guidance for the housing-benefit method, tax bands, and allowance used above.