Government fee: To incorporate a company in Hong Kong, you will always have to pay a fee to government. The fee (that is required for the first year) is for your business certificate of incorporation and your business registration certificate. It is valid for the duration of a year from the first day of April in the current year to the last day of March in the following year.
Handling of the incorporation process: A professional agency certainly can always handle and process your Hong Kong company registration. This would include a company name search as you cannot register a company name that is already existed, and you must meet certain requirements when coming up with names. The company name can be a name in English language, or in Chinese, but cannot be a combination of Chinese and English. An Article of Association must be created. A government incorporation form with your signature on it must be filed. The Significant Controllers Register (SCR) has to be prepared. All the signed form must be verified to make sure they do not contain any errors and have to be submitted to the Companies Registry locally in Hong Kong.
Forwarding of government letters: You may run a business from home, and work with a few freelancers (each of different skills, and each work from a different remote location) from time to time. It is absolutely alright that in your daily operations your business has no formal and physical office. However, you will receive letters and documents from the HK government from time to time, and you should not miss receiving any of them. Without an operation address, the solution is to let your agency handle this part. The agency would receive and temporarily keep all your government letters, and have them delivered to you. Basically, your agency would have a physical address, which would be registered as your business address.
Company secretary: To comply with the statutory requirement, your agency should also be able to represent as the designated representative and company secretary of your business. The company secretary role cannot be one of shareholders or directors of your business. The best is to have the agency as an entity to act as the company secretary, or one of the persons in the agency to act in the role.
Type of company: Decide in the early stage the type of company that would suit you most. The choice is usually between either a private limited company or a sole proprietorship.
