From HKFP, pix and stories from Causeway Bay yesterday…
In Victoria Park, a man holding an electric candle while sitting on a bench was surrounded by police officers at around 4.30pm. The man, wearing a face mask, a white cap, and dressed in black attire, was later brought to a police van. Police did not say whether he was apprehended.
Among others stopped by police: a dog wearing a collar with yellow ribbons, and a woman eating a banana.
Customs take action against a candle shop…
Hong Kong customs officers inspected ex-district councillor Katrina Chan’s incense shop for hours on the eve of the Tiananmen crackdown anniversary, accusing her of failing to comply with product safety regulations.
…They told her she was suspected of violating the Consumer Goods Safety Regulation because she had failed to include bilingual safety labels on products.
Inspections of the products lasted more than four hours, from 7.30pm to around 11.40pm, after the mall had already closed.
Oiwan Lam writes on the Hong Kong tax authorities’ recent interest in independent media…
These organisations and individuals were requested to pay a provisional tax demand before IRD’s investigation into any alleged underpayment was complete. The total provisional tax demanded from the eight media organisations was about HKD 700,000 (USD 89,300), while from individuals it was about HKD 1 million (USD 127,590).
What’s worse is that the tax authority has made errors and unreasonable claims when auditing profit tax for independent media outlets and their reporters’ income, according to [HKJA chair] Selina Cheng. Although they could apply for a review and a deferred payment, they had to prepare financial records to invalidate the authority’s estimations.
Cheng herself is also a victim of such arbitrary tax audits. She was asked to pay backdated tax for the 2018/2019 financial year. Her annual income at that time was only HKD 230,000 (USD 29,340), but the authority claimed her income was up to HKD 630,000 (USD 80,380) and demanded that she pay the backdated tax.
HKFP reports that a different sort of business run by a pan-dem figure is getting similar attention…
Derek Chu, an ex-district councillor and the owner of e-commerce company As One, said on Tuesday that the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) demanded in April that his business pay HK$120,075 in profit tax for the financial year 2023-24.
The tax assessment would mean As One made a profit of about HK$1.5 million in 2023-24, but in reality, his shop only recorded a profit of less than HK$100,000, Chu told HKFP in a phone interview.
Most of As One’s HK$4 million income last year was spent on salaries, rent, and restocking products, he added.
“The numbers should have been obvious to the IRD,” Chu said. “I don’t know how they could see that much profit.”
The shop owner, who also founded the prisoners’ rights advocacy group Waiting Bird, accused the IRD of “targeting” his business and said he decided to speak up about the tax demand to “set the record straight.”
“It’s about telling people that what the IRD did was completely unwarranted,” he said.
“Asia’s World City”.
Now say it without irony.
I think it’s definitely now “Asia’s Worried City”.
Apparently, China’s national security is now so weak and fragile that it requires hundreds of armed police and armoured cars to deal with the enormous threat to a “super power” posed by a handful of people carrying flowers, eating bananas, wearing shirts with CCP propaganda slogans on them or holding candles.
It is heartening to know that the might of the CCP is so marginal and in-the-balance. They’re petrified of flowers and candles to the point where they’re feel the only rational and sober reaction to them is to spend billions and billions of dollars on the police to stop them being carried on a few days every year.
And every time they do, they make themselves a laughing stock as they Streisand Effect the hell out of the incident they’re so desperate for us all to forget and present themselves and their apparatus of repression as cartoonish, cowardly, inept villains.
“It is heartening to know that the might of the CCP is so marginal and in-the-balance. ”
I wish I had your optimism. It’s never been a better time to be an authoritarian state thanks to big data and AI.
Unless the military turns against them, mere words only hurt their fragile ego rather than do any real lasting damage.
In veiw of the manpower, equipment and costs involved, June 4 Causeway Bay should be ranked as an annual Mega Event………………………………………