The Financial Secretary for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), Mr. Paul Chan, delivered his seventh annual budget on Wednesday, 22 February 2023. As an international financial center, the HKSAR Government has recently been rolling out several initiatives and tax incentives on how the city can address emerging challenges facing the post-pandemic and global challenges to promote economic diversification for sustainable development in the future. During this webcast, our Deloitte professionals will discuss budget highlights, new Budget measures, measures to attract strategic investments to foster sustainable development, tax incentives for specific sectors and upholding Hong Kong's position as an international financial and asset management center. (Live presentation was aired on 16 March 2023)

Lackluster economic growth, ensuring fairness within the tax system, and increasing geopolitical tensions are all contributing factors that shape Japan’s 2023 tax reform proposals. These proposals reflect the Japanese government’s desire to increase domestic investment in markets, industries, and talent, and its commitment to promoting internationally agreed tax standards, such as the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework’s global minimum tax. They also reflect the Prime Minister’s stated intention to increase Japan’s defense budget to around 2% of GDP. Accordingly, while not scheduled for 2023, the proposals suggest that a portion of the increased budget will be funded through future tax increases. Finally, the proposals include measures to further ease compliance with the Electronic Record Retention Law and the Japanese Consumption Tax (JCT) Qualified Invoicing System, which will come into effect on 1 October 2023. Stay tuned with our Deloitte professionals as they discuss key areas of Japan’s tax credit and incentive regimes, Japan’s implementation of the global minimum tax and readiness for the arrival of JCT qualified invoicing. (Live presentation was aired on 14 February 2023)

The transfer pricing function has had to deal with a significant increase in external reporting requirements, amongst more complex demands from the business and its need for transfer pricing input. To do this effectively, a transfer pricing function will need to adopt key principles of operational transfer pricing (People, Process, Data and Technology) across more than just the application of the transfer pricing policies, as it looks for opportunities to streamline and automate work undertaken, allowing it to contribute to proactive and strategic decision making of the business. Increased data-driven controversy mitigation strategies and global reporting requirements, as well as competent authorities’ continued focus on transfer pricing governance and their own investments in tax technologies, has made digitalising operational transfer pricing processes as a strategic priority for taxpayers. Gain insights from Deloitte professionals as they break down the core framework of operationalising tasks in the transfer pricing function and provide case studies to illustrate how this works in practice. (Live presentation was aired on 9 February 2023)

Geography Updates Union Budget 2023: India’s spectrum of opportunities India Budget 2023 will be presented in the Parliament on 1 February 2023, at a critical juncture in the global economy—when geopolitical uncertainty, rising inflation, and sluggish growth are seen to coexist. Calculated actions to strengthen domestic sources of growth are required to maintain the country's current trajectory of steady economic growth. The Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, is expected to work out strategies to push India as a production or sourcing hub, amid recession fears in the west. Accordingly, the Budget is likely to continue to focus on capital expenditure as a growth driver and give an impetus to manufacturing while continuing with the post-pandemic fiscal consolidation. Tune into our Deloitte professionals as they share a short, simple, and strategic take on the India Budget 2023 and discuss on Government's tax initiatives, Key policy announcements, analysis and impact of new tax proposals on your sectors. (Live presentation was aired on 2 February 2023)

The introduction of GST in 2017 brought upon a turbulent period for businesses in India. New legislation replaced most of the prevalent Indirect Tax legislations and introduced a uniform tax regime across the country. While the intent was noble, and provided clarifications, amendments and modifications in the existing legislation, it also led to different interpretations tax authorities. This resulted in variance in tax positions and practices across the country. As the Law and its interpretation have become stabilized in due course, various Intelligence Agencies in the department of revenue swung into action and armed with specific information owing to the advanced technology tools causing businesses to be flooded with Audits, enquiries and investigations. Stay tuned with our Deloitte professionals as they address the common issues raised by the Revenue Authorities, discuss how can companies strategize their way forward during these audits/investigations and prepare for them. (Live presentation was aired on 17 January 2023)

Tax authorities in India are struggling to come to grips with this dynamic nature of Virtual Digital Assets (VDA). This makes it difficult for the law makers to understand how VDAs could be included in the traditional definitions and concepts of taxes particularly for GST to be applied. The Indian Government has taken steps to bring clarity to the taxation of VDA’s (such as cryptocurrencies and NFTs) from a direct tax perspective by recognizing them as new asset class and including them in the tax framework. However, clarity is still awaited on the GST front. Join our Deloitte professionals as they discuss the Types of VDAs, Their classification under the traditional good and services, its Tax implication in cross border transactions. (Live presentation was aired on 12 January 2023)

Over the years, there has been significant growth in legal, operational and structural reorganizations and integrations undertaken by corporations to achieve strategic benefits and to bring value to its shareholders. Tax has cross-functional interdependencies throughout the organization and plays an important role while undertaking such restructurings / reorganization. An effective PMI plan assists in magnifying the value created for the future of an enterprise by realizing efficiencies, synergies and carving our redundancies. Stay tuned with our Deloitte professionals from Korea, Australia and Hong Kong as they discuss key areas of PMI, such as simplification of legal entity structure, identifying tax synergies, evaluation of IP, value chain and supply chain planning opportunities, transfer pricing requirements and documentation, and tax planning. (Live presentation was aired on 8 December 2022)

In October 2022, Hong Kong is going to release final rules on taxation of foreign-sourced passive income with effect from 1 January 2023. This follows a requirement from the European Union after they announced to add Hong Kong on its watchlist on tax cooperation last year. Despite its territorial system, Hong Kong will deem taxable certain types of income, including interest, dividends, capital gains and royalties when received in Hong Kong if certain requirements could not be met. Gain insights from Deloitte professionals as they address what income may be taxed and what routes remain to keep income “Offshore”, applicability of rules, its exemptions and update on Hong Kong’s approach to minimum tax. (Live presentation was aired on 24 November 2022)

In recent years, we have seen a number of countries in the region either adopt or announce an intention to adopt e-invoicing or other electronic reporting requirements. The approaches adopted across the region have not been uniform. Importantly the driving reasons for Governments to adopt such requirements have varied from increasing efficiency and transparency in the invoicing process to enabling tax authorities to have greater access to taxpayer data and information. Whilst these requirements are not yet mandatory in many jurisdictions, based on the recent actions taken by the Governments in the region, it is expected that it will become mandatory within next few years. Tune into our Deloitte professionals as they discuss the trend of the above mentioned in Asia Pacific, E-invoicing requirements, share insights on how businesses can adopt E-invoicing, prepare themselves and adapt to this changing environment. (Live presentation was aired on 17 November 2022)

The transition towards renewable sources of energy present unique challenges and opportunities to traditional value chains. This Dbrief is aimed at all sectors which could be impacted by the decarbonization of the economy, from heavy industries right through to consumer services. This transition process is likely to have significant transfer pricing impacts. Stay tuned with our Deloitte professionals as they discuss the role of green finance, emerging green technologies, trade of carbon credits, export of hydrogen and other renewable energy classes. (Live presentation was aired on 8 November 2022)