Hong Kong company for Amazon sellers: real costs and steps in 2026

Short answer: the mandatory government fees are HK$1,545 to the Companies Registry for electronic filing plus HK$2,350 for a one-year Business Registration Certificate. That is HK$3,895, roughly $500. Everything above that is service: company secretary, registered address, document set, and preparing your profile for a bank or payment platform.

Our turnkey price is $2,200 with the government fees inside it, and $2,800 including a payment platform account.

The 2026 fee change nobody mentions

The Business Registration Certificate includes a HK$150 levy for the Protection of Wages on Insolvency Fund. That levy was waived from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2026, and during the waiver a one-year certificate cost HK$2,200. The waiver ended, and from 1 April 2026 the certificate is HK$2,350.

If you are reading a cost guide that shows HK$2,200, it was written before April and has not been updated. It is a useful test of whether the rest of the page is current.

A three-year certificate costs HK$6,170, which saves a little and removes one annual renewal from your calendar.

What Amazon asks for

Amazon verifies a corporate seller account against government documents. In practice you need:

• the Certificate of Incorporation, issued by the Companies Registry;
• the Business Registration Certificate, issued by the Inland Revenue Department;
• proof of the beneficial owner’s identity and address;
• a bank or payment account in the company name that can receive disbursements in your marketplace currencies.

Both certificates come out of a standard incorporation, so nothing extra is needed. The part that trips sellers up is the last line: the account name must match the seller account name exactly.

First-year budget

Item	Price	Note
Hong Kong company, turnkey	$2,200	company, secretary and registered address for year one, all government fees, document set and seals
Payment platform account	$600	file preparation, submission, support to activation. 50% at start, 50% on success
Traditional bank account, instead of the above	$1,900	after pre-screening. 40% at start, 60% once open
Structuring for compliance, if the profile is complex	$300	credited against the incorporation

Two realistic totals: $2,800 with a payment platform, $4,100 with a traditional bank. Incorporation takes 5-7 working days, payment terms are 50% upfront and 50% on completion.

Second year onward

This is where budgets get broken, because year two is not optional.

Package	Price	Covers
Basic	$1,100/yr	secretary, registered address, NAR1, BR renewal, mail handling, deadline calendar
Standard	$2,000/yr	Basic plus preparing data for the audit and tax return, working with the auditor, one company change per year
Premium	$3,200/yr	Standard plus bookkeeping up to 15 transactions a month, tax residency certificate, priority contact

On top of that sits the audit and profits tax return, priced by the auditor against your turnover. It is the one line we do not publish as a fixed number, because it honestly depends on you rather than on us.

For a seller doing real volume, the Standard package plus audit is the realistic steady state. Budget for it in month one rather than discovering it in month thirteen.

The tax point most guides get wrong

Hong Kong taxes profits on a territorial basis. That is not the same as a zero-tax jurisdiction. Profits with a Hong Kong source are taxable, profits sourced offshore may be exempt, and claiming the exemption is an active process: you file, the Inland Revenue Department asks questions, and you support the claim with evidence about where the deals were negotiated and concluded.

For an Amazon seller buying in Guangdong and selling in the US, the claim is often arguable. Arguable is not automatic. Two consequences: keep your contracts and correspondence, and get advice specific to your flows rather than relying on a blog post, including this one.

A sensible sequence

1. Decide the entity name and check it is available.
2. Incorporate: 5-7 working days, remote.
3. Open a payment platform account while the incorporation documents are fresh.
4. Register the Amazon seller account against the two certificates.
5. Set the calendar for the annual return, the BR renewal and the first audit.
6. After a year of clean transaction history, consider a traditional bank account if you need one.

Why we price it this way

The published number includes the government fees on purpose. A registration advertised at $500 is the fee, not the company: the secretary and the registered address are legal requirements and they arrive as separate invoices later. Compare offers on the cost of a full first year, and then on the cost of year two, because that is the number you will pay every year after.

Send us the product category, the marketplaces you sell on and your rough monthly volume, and we will tell you which account type is realistic for your profile before you pay for anything.