Estate Duty Clearance in Hong Kong: Why a Death Before 11 February 2006 Can Still Stop a Sale

What to know first

Estate duty stopped applying to deaths on or after 11 February 2006, but the Estate Duty Ordinance itself was never deleted — it still applies to everyone who died before that date. So what governs your transaction is not today's tax system. It is the date the deceased died.

• Check one date. The Estate Duty Ordinance (Cap. 111) s. 2 provides that the Ordinance applies to a person who dies on or after 1 January 1916 and before 11 February 2006. That boundary is on the face of the statute, not in anyone's discretion.

• "Abolished" is not "deleted", and this is the point most readers get wrong. The 2005 Ordinance that ended estate duty narrowed the forward reach of Cap. 111 s. 2; it did not repeal the Ordinance. Its only saving provision saves probate court fees, not duty. Deaths before the boundary therefore never left the old regime.

• What is blocking you sits on the grant side, not on the assignment side. Cap. 111 s. 15(1) bars the court from issuing probate or letters of administration until the Commissioner has certified in writing; and Cap. 10A r. 43 — added by the 2005 abolition Ordinance itself — requires an application for a grant to be supported by the documents Cap. 111 requires. Meanwhile the Conveyancing and Property Ordinance (Cap. 219) does not mention estate duty at all.

• In the cases the Estate Duty Office finalises, the overwhelming majority owe nothing. Of the 376 estate duty cases the Inland Revenue Department finalised in 2024-25, 370 were exempt — 98.4%. ⚠ That is a share of finalised cases, not a census of deaths or of estates. ⚠ "Exempt" is not a synonym for s. 14A. s. 14A(1) is confined to an estate whose principal value does not exceed $400,000, where no duty is payable and the specified disclosure has been made, and the Commissioner may attach conditions. An estate can be non-dutiable for reasons that have nothing to do with s. 14A — most obviously a death on or after 11 February 2006. The published figure does not say how many of the 370 were s. 14A cases. They are different documents under different sections.

• The purchaser's solicitor cannot obtain any of these documents. The word purchaser appears 6 times in Cap. 111, and every occurrence protects a purchaser or excuses him from liability. None empowers one to apply for anything.

The wall is mostly on the grant side — but s.18 puts a charge on the property itself

The same Ordinance that ended estate duty going forward also, in the same document, enacted a fresh rule: where the Estate Duty Ordinance applies, an application for a grant must be supported by the documents that Ordinance requires. For a seller or heir, the practical choke point is usually the grant.

⚠ But it is not true that estate duty never touches title, and Cap. 111 s.18 is why. Section 18(1) makes a rateable part of the duty "a first charge on the property in respect of which estate duty is leviable", subject to a proviso that the property "shall not be chargeable as against a bona fide purchaser thereof for valuable consideration without notice". s.18(2) lets the Commissioner give notice of that charge by registering a memorial in the Land Registry, and s.18(3) allows a written notice of the charge to be entered there as an instrument affecting land. A first charge, a notice provision and a Land Registry entry are conveyancing machinery, not grant machinery. How far the proviso's "notice" extends turns on case law and the facts.

The natural reading of "abolished in 2006" is that anything still standing is a leftover nobody got round to deleting. It is the opposite. The rule was drafted in, in 2005, and keyed to the date of death.

Non-Contentious Probate Rules (Cap. 10 sub. leg. A) r. 43, which carries the credit (21 of 2005 s. 33) on its own face:

Read with Cap. 111 s. 15(1):

In other words, this is a chain, not a rule about conveyancing:

• No estate-duty document →
• the court will not issue a grant (s. 15(1)) →
• who may execute an assignment then turns on whether there is a will (next paragraph) →
• the purchaser's solicitor sees a break in the title chain and raises a requisition.

⚠ The distinction step 3 turns on, which most accounts of this get backwards: an executor and an administrator are not in the same position. An executor's office and title come from the will and take effect on the death; probate is the formal proof of that title, not its source. The Ordinance shows it: Probate and Administration Ordinance (Cap. 10, consolidated 18 December 2025) s. 34(1) provides that "An executor of a sole or last surviving executor of a testator is the executor of that testator.", and every person in that chain of representation "has the same rights in respect of the estate of that testator as the original executor would have had if living" — without taking any fresh grant for the earlier testator. An administrator is the other way round: his authority begins with the grant. Cap. 10 s. 10: "Where any person dies, whether in Hong Kong or elsewhere, leaving estate in Hong Kong in respect of which he dies intestate, such estate shall vest in the Official Administrator who may, if he thinks fit, receive and take possession of the same until administration is granted in respect thereof."

So "without a grant nobody has any authority" is broadly right on an intestacy and wrong where there is a will. For a sale, though, the practical difference is smaller than it sounds: Cap. 10 s. 54(1) bars a conveyance of a deceased person's immovable property without the concurrence of all the personal representatives or an order of the court; a purchaser's side will ordinarily require the grant as formal proof in any event; and s. 15(1) with r. 43 means no grant issues until the estate-duty documents are in. Whether a particular transaction can be signed before a grant turns on the will, the deeds and the contract, and it is a question for a solicitor.

Note how s. 15(1) is drafted, because most accounts of it stop halfway. What the Commissioner certifies is that the duty has been paid or that he has allowed payment to be postponed under subsections (2) and (3). Paying and getting a grant are not welded together by the statute. That postponement route is dealt with below, under When the certificate is not coming.

And note the difference between step 4 and the first three. The first three are statutory. The fourth is not. The Conveyancing and Property Ordinance (Cap. 219, consolidated 13 December 2018) does not mention estate duty. (Cap. 10, by contrast, does name the duty.) Cap. 111 s.15 and Cap. 10A r.43 directly block the grant; Cap. 111 s.18 can separately affect the property within its terms. Beyond those statutory layers, what evidence the purchaser's solicitor requires, how long is allowed to supply it, and whether the title will be accepted also depend on the contract and conveyancing practice. How far that can go is dealt with below.

One date decides everything

The date of death decides which regime you are in, which threshold applied, which document you need — and that date cannot move, because no power to move it exists.

Cap. 111 s. 2, in full:

Put plainly: the Ordinance stopped for deaths on or after 11 February 2006 and never stopped for deaths before it. So the first step is to read the date on the death certificate:

Can that date move? No — and the reason is on the face of the 2005 Ordinance. The Revenue (Abolition of Estate Duty) Ordinance 2005 (21 of 2005) s. 2 provides that it comes into operation on the expiry of the period of 3 months commencing on the day it is published in the Gazette: a self-executing formula, with no appointed day and no power over the date. The only Gazette power the Ordinance takes is s. 41, and it is ministerial — it lets the Secretary for Justice replace the words "the commencement date of this Ordinance" with the actual calendar date. It was exercised as L.N. 210 of 2005. It could write the date down; it could not change it.

What was the threshold in the year your grandfather died? The 25-Part table

The rate table the Government publishes begins on 1 April 1996 and has four date bands. Schedule 1 to the Estate Duty Ordinance has 25 Parts, and the earliest reaches back to people who died before 27 February 1931. Twenty-one of the twenty-five Parts appear on no published government rate table at all.

The dates below come from the definition of applicable Part of Schedule 1 in Cap. 111 s. 3 (its table has 24 rows; paragraph (a) of the definition supplies Part 1, which is why 24 rows produce 25 Parts). The money comes from Schedule 1 Parts 1 to 25 themselves. The English and Chinese authentic texts agree on the threshold and the top rate in all 25 Parts, and the 24 date rows in s. 3 agree character for character.

<table> <caption>Estate Duty Ordinance (Cap. 111), s. 3 definition of "applicable Part of Schedule 1" and Schedule 1 Parts 1–25 (version in force 1 July 2022). The threshold column is the value the principal value of the estate had to <strong>exceed</strong> before any duty was payable; an estate at or below it paid nothing.</caption> <thead><tr><th>Part</th><th>Died on or after</th><th>And before</th><th>Nothing payable at or below</th><th>Top rate</th></tr></thead> <tbody> <tr><td>Part 1</td><td>—</td><td>27 February 1931</td><td>$500</td><td>8%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 2</td><td>27 February 1931</td><td>1 July 1936</td><td>$500</td><td>12%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 3</td><td>1 July 1936</td><td>1 April 1941</td><td>$500</td><td>20%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 4</td><td>1 April 1941</td><td>1 April 1948</td><td>$500</td><td>52%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 5</td><td>1 April 1948</td><td>1 February 1959</td><td>$5,000</td><td>52%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 6</td><td>1 February 1959</td><td>1 January 1963</td><td>$50,000</td><td>40%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 7</td><td>1 January 1963</td><td>1 April 1967</td><td>$100,000</td><td>40%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 8</td><td>1 April 1967</td><td>1 April 1970</td><td>$100,000</td><td>25%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 9</td><td>1 April 1970</td><td>1 April 1972</td><td>$200,000</td><td>20%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 10</td><td>1 April 1972</td><td>1 April 1974</td><td>$200,000</td><td>15%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 11</td><td>1 April 1974</td><td>11 June 1976</td><td>$300,000</td><td>15%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 12</td><td>11 June 1976</td><td>3 June 1977</td><td>$300,000</td><td>18%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 13</td><td>3 June 1977</td><td>11 July 1980</td><td>$400,000</td><td>18%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 14</td><td>11 July 1980</td><td>29 May 1981</td><td>$600,000</td><td>18%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 15</td><td>29 May 1981</td><td>4 June 1982</td><td>$1,000,000</td><td>18%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 16</td><td>4 June 1982</td><td>1 April 1987</td><td>$2,000,000</td><td>18%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 17</td><td>1 April 1987</td><td>1 April 1990</td><td>$2,000,000</td><td>18%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 18</td><td>1 April 1990</td><td>1 April 1993</td><td>$4,000,000</td><td>18%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 19</td><td>1 April 1993</td><td>1 April 1994</td><td>$5,000,000</td><td>18%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 20</td><td>1 April 1994</td><td>1 April 1995</td><td>$5,500,000</td><td>18%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 21</td><td>1 April 1995</td><td>1 April 1996</td><td>$6,000,000</td><td>18%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 22</td><td>1 April 1996</td><td>1 April 1997</td><td>$6,500,000</td><td>18%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 23</td><td>1 April 1997</td><td>1 April 1998</td><td>$7,000,000</td><td>18%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 24</td><td>1 April 1998</td><td>15 July 2005</td><td>$7,500,000</td><td>15%</td></tr> <tr><td>Part 25</td><td>15 July 2005</td><td>11 February 2006</td><td>$7,500,000</td><td>flat $100</td></tr> </tbody> </table>

To make the gap concrete: a relative who died in 1985 falls in Part 16 — nothing payable at or below $2,000,000. The earliest band on the Government's published rate table begins on 1 April 1996, so that relative's row is not on it.

Four limits, to be read with the table:

• This is a lookup, not a calculator. The threshold column is the figure the estate had to exceed, not an allowance. The table tells you which band and which threshold applied; the actual duty needs a valuation and the deductions, and should be worked out by a professional. The relief for an estate that only just crosses a threshold is not missing from the law, though: it is Cap. 111 s. 32, set out in full in the next section.
• In the statute, Parts 11 to 20 are headed by reference to the commencement of amending Ordinances rather than by calendar dates. The calendar dates above come from s. 3's own conversion table, and the two agree Part by Part — Part 16, for instance, carries an Editorial Note giving commencement dates of 4 June 1982 and 1 April 1987, which is what s. 3's table says.
• The English heading of Part 13 cites the 1977 amending Ordinance as 31 of 1997, while Part 12's English heading and Part 13's Chinese text both read 1977. That is a defect in the text as consolidated; rely on the calendar dates in s. 3.
• Can any of it be moved: no threshold and no band date in Cap. 111 rests on a power to move it: across the Ordinance, none of gazette, may by order, chief executive in council, appointed day or secretary may occurs at all. The single by resolution hit is s. 22(1C), which is an appeal-forum amount and not a duty threshold (see below).

Where an estate only just crosses a threshold: the Ordinance has a provision for exactly that

An estate that only just crosses a threshold does not jump from nothing to the full charge. Cap. 111 s. 32 is about that case. It is a live provision — it sits in the body of the Ordinance, marked in effect — and it states no period of application and names no Part: it is written by reference to "the scale of rates of duty" and "the next lower rate".

The structure is a cap in two parts. The duty payable is reduced, where necessary, so as not to exceed (i) the highest amount of duty that would be payable at the next lower rate, plus (ii) an addition measured on the amount by which the estate's value exceeds the value on which that highest amount would be payable. So an estate a little over the line is not charged as though it were well over it.

How that second part is measured differs, on the face of it, between the two authentic texts. The English reads "with the addition of the amount by which the value of the estate exceeds the value on which the highest amount of duty would be so payable at the lower rate". The Chinese text adds, after the same excess, the words 「按較低一級稅率計算所得的款額」 — the amount arrived at by computing that excess at the next lower rate. The two texts agree on the first limb and diverge on how the addition is measured. Which text governs is a question of law.

What does not have to be guessed at is how the section is actually administered, because IRD's own Table of Rates answers it. Beside the rates, that table carries a column headed "Maximum value beyond which "marginal" relief does not apply" — the value above which the s. 32 reduction stops helping. Working those figures backwards shows which reading the Department applies.

Take the 1 April 1998 to 15 July 2005 band. Its first rate step is "exceeds $7,500,000, does not exceed $9,000,000, 5%", and the maximum the table prints is $7,894,736. If the addition is 100% of the excess over $7,500,000 — the English reading — the crossover is 0.05X = X − 7,500,000, giving X = $7,894,736.84, which is the printed figure. Applied to all three bands and all nine printed maxima, nine out of nine reconcile: six to the dollar (the Department truncating the cents), and the three 1996-97 figures short by $93.62, $54.55 and $21.95 — all three of which are printed ending in "00", i.e. rounded down to the nearest hundred.

The Chinese reading does not reconcile with the Department's own numbers. On that reading the addition in the first rate step (whose next lower rate is "Exempt", i.e. nil) would be nil times the excess — nothing at all — so nothing would ever be payable in that step and no maximum could be printed for it.

So two things have to be kept apart. First, the two authentic texts differ on the face of the second limb, and which governs is not settled. Second, in administration the Department's published figures are computed on 100% of the excess over the next lower band's ceiling, which is what a reader actually meets. The actual duty on a real estate still needs a valuation and the deductions.

The Department's own form prints the section. Cap. 111 sub. leg. B, Prescription of Forms under Section 28, prescribes the form of the Certificate of Assessment (I.R. Form E.D. 3), and that form carries a dedicated line:

In short: the relief is s. 32, this is how it is built, and its two texts differ on the second limb. The actual figure needs a valuation and the deductions, and should be worked out by a professional.

One search note, because this is the section that sends people to the Department. IRD writes the character for "duty" differently in different formats of its own material: its estate-duty web page uses 税 (U+7A0E) and its own penalty-policy PDF uses 稅 (U+7A05). If you search the Department's site, try both spellings — one form finds the PDFs and misses the main page, and the other does the reverse.

Why a repealed tax can still reach a flat

Abolition stopped the tax going forward; it did not release charges that earlier deaths had already created. But the charge in s. 18 is a conditioned charge, not a blanket lien over the flat — and the Ordinance itself contains one sentence about selling.

1. What the charge is, and what it attaches to

Cap. 111 s. 18(1):

So the subsection has two limbs, each with its own condition: (a) catches property which does not pass to the executor as such; (b) catches leasehold property held solely by the deceased where duty is paid by instalments under s. 12(8). The Ordinance does not say that estate duty is a charge over everything the deceased owned. It says those two things.

2. Section 12(8) — where the statute and a completion date meet

Paragraph (b) depends on s. 12(8), which reads:

"In case the property is sold shall be paid on completion of the sale" is where the statute and a completion date appear on the same line. It is also the precise legal shape of what a purchaser's solicitor is worried about: not "was tax ever paid" in the abstract, but "if it was being paid by instalments, the balance falls due on completion".

3. The express exception, and how it can be narrowed

The proviso to s. 18(1) is the exception the section writes down: the property is not chargeable as against a bona fide purchaser for valuable consideration without notice. The same proviso is repeated for the controlled-company floating charge in s. 43(6), and s. 14(10) is blunter still:

And "without notice" is something the Commissioner can act unilaterally to erode. s. 18(2):

And s. 18(3) allows a notice in writing of a charge under s. 18(1) or (2) to be entered in the Land Registry as an instrument affecting land. Note the drafting: s. 18(2) says notice "may be given by" registering a Memorial. It is permissive, and it is not expressed as the only way notice can be given. A registered Memorial is a public record, but its legal effect on "without notice" in an individual transaction — including how actual, constructive or imputed notice may apply — is a question of case law. Nor does the subsection say the protection is removed permanently, and the charge itself is a charge for duty. Hong Kong's purchaser protection is notice-based, and the Commissioner may give notice of the charge by registering a Memorial. That is the point on which the parent jurisdiction differs; see The United Kingdom did the same thing below.

4. A limited textual inference, not a decided proposition

What s. 18(1) charges is "a rateable part of the estate duty on an estate". On the face of those words, where no duty was payable on the estate, there appears to be no rateable amount of duty to charge. That is only a textual inference, not a court's holding.

Set against the figures the Government itself publishes, the ordinary finalised case is an estate that owed nothing: 258 dutiable of 15,620 finalised in 2003/04; 309 of 17,005 in 2005-06; 20 of 1,838 across the five years 2020-21 to 2024-25 (see How many, how long, how much below). Among cases the Office finalises, the common shape of this problem is not an unpaid tax. It is a missing document.

5. All of that is current law — and there is an enacted branch that is not in force

Everything above is current law. Hong Kong land is held under the deeds registration system in the Land Registration Ordinance (Cap. 128), and the Memorial and entry in s. 18(2) and (3) operate inside that system.

But the Land Titles Ordinance (Cap. 585) has been enacted and has never come into force. Its s. 1 is marked in the statute book "(Not yet in operation)", and s. 1(2) provides: "This Ordinance shall come into operation on a day to be appointed by the Secretary for Development by notice published in the Gazette." — the commencement date rests on a power that has not been exercised, not on a fixed date. (The version date of the Cap. 585 text is in Sources.)

And it rewrites Cap. 111 s. 18. A provision in Cap. 585's Schedule repeals and replaces s. 18(2) and adds a new s. 18(2A): where a charge under s. 18(1) is to be registered under the Land Titles Ordinance, the Commissioner may give notice of it by registering a non-consent caution under that Ordinance rather than a Memorial under the Land Registration Ordinance. The same Ordinance also carries s. 28(1)(h) (the standing of a s. 18(1) charge after first registration of title, subject to a three-year condition and to the charge not having been registered under s. 18(2)), s. 63 (removing a deceased joint tenant's name only once the Registrar is satisfied duty is not payable, has been paid, or has been secured under s. 15) and s. 64 (transmission on the death of a sole owner).

Separately, the Registration of Titles and Land (Miscellaneous Amendments) Ordinance 2025 (Ord. 40 of 2025) was gazetted on 3 October 2025 and had not commenced as at September 2026. Gazettal is not commencement.

Three points: (i) the account of s. 18(2)–(3) and the Land Registry above is current law, and it is the law that applies to land today; (ii) Cap. 585 and Ord. 40 of 2025 are enacted but not in force, so they are not current law and do not govern any transaction now; (iii) commencement still rests on the Gazette power in s. 1(2). ⚠ The Government has, however, stated a target of its own. The Land Registry's title-registration FAQ says:

⚠ An aim is not a commencement date. The power in s. 1(2) is unchanged, and there is no commencement date until it is exercised. Transactions today continue to be governed by current law.

Two limits, in this section rather than in a footnote:

• The Memorial machinery in s. 18(2) is expressly about leasehold property.
• How often a Memorial under s. 18(2) is used is not published. The Land Registry publishes no breakdown of registered instruments by type.

Which document? The route decides, and the route comes first

The "clearance" a purchaser's solicitor asks for is not the name of one document. It is a set of outcomes, and which one reaches you is decided by the route: which return had to be filed, whether duty was payable, and whether the Commissioner granted an exemption. s. 23(3) settles one of those: where an exemption under s. 14A(1) has been granted, what is annexed to the grant is the certificate of exemption and not the schedule of property.

First: which return has to be filed

The route is chosen by the return, not by the document. IRD's published Procedures to Obtain Estate Duty Clearance provides that the intending executor or administrator has to file one of three returns within six months of the death, together with payment of the duty if any: an Affidavit for the Commissioner (Form IRED 1), a Statement in Lieu of Affidavit (Form IRED 63A), or an Account for the Commissioner (Form IRED 12) — and that where delivery is delayed beyond 12 months from the death, duty is charged at twice the applicable rate (the provision is s. 16(1), below).

Beyond the returns there are operational forms, and one of them exists because of land. The Estate Duty block of IRD's live public-forms page lists, besides those three returns, Form IRED 11 Corrective Affidavit, Form IRED 30 Questionnaire about landed property, and U3/SC/E49 Questionnaire for Matrimonial Home Exemption Claim. IRED 30 is the one that arrives because the estate includes land. Both language versions carry the same form number and revision marking — the English I.R.E.D. 30 (10/2002), the Chinese I.R.E.D. 表格第 30 號 (10/2002). The form asks which parts of the property were neither sub-let nor let at the date of death and which were let or leased; for each let part, when the lease began, its length, the rent, the date the rent began, what other charges the tenant paid the landlord, and whether landlord or tenant paid rates; the use of the property; the term of the Government lease and the annual Government Rent; whether the lease has been regranted and, if so, the date of the regrant agreement and the premium; what was owing to the deceased at the date of death, accrued or apportioned; when the deceased acquired the property and for what consideration; and the registered owners and their respective shares. For a rural New Territories lot it also asks whether the site is bare and, if not, the year the building was completed, the number of storeys and the floor area, with a location or floor plan attached. (This site's summary.)

On the same page the footnote markers attach to IRED 1, 11, 12 and 63A — fax copies not accepted, and loose-leaf documents not accepted unless the deponent and the attesting solicitor or Commissioner for Oaths sign every page — and they do not attach to IRED 30. Whether a particular form must be sworn depends on the prescribed-form requirements in Cap. 111 and Cap. 111A (above).

The Statement in Lieu of Affidavit is the s. 14A small-estate route. The Administration described the same split to the Legislative Council in 2005 (LC Paper No. CB(2)2185/04-05(01), ¶2), and it put land inside the definition: the simpler return was for an estate below $400,000 and without landed property, business and unquoted shares, and the paper ties that route expressly to s. 14A. (This site's summary.)

Then: the instruments that come out of it, and who each goes to

The table lists the main instruments. It is not a closed list — the Ordinance and the Department do not use identical names.

Which of those have a statutorily prescribed form? Cap. 111 s. 28 gives the power to make rules and prescribe forms:

Two pieces of subsidiary legislation under the chapter are in force and do exactly that — and they are not made under the same section. The Estate Duty (Forms) Notice (Cap. 111 sub. leg. A) is made under "(Cap. 111, section 3(1))" and provides: "(1)Form 1 in the Schedule shall be the form of Affidavit for the Commissioner. (2)Form 2 in the Schedule shall be the form of Account for the Commissioner." The Prescription of Forms under Section 28 (Cap. 111 sub. leg. B, version in force 3 June 2021) is the s. 28 instrument, and it reads: "Pursuant to section 28 of the Estate Duty Ordinance (Cap. 111) and in conjunction with section 14(12) and section 3 of that Ordinance, the Governor in Council has prescribed the forms set out below as being respectively the Form of Certificate of Assessment and the Form of Corrective Affidavit."

So of the instruments in the table, the Certificate of Assessment is the one with a prescribed statutory form (I.R. Form E.D. 3). The s. 23(1) Schedule of Property has no form prescribed by either instrument — neither mentions s. 23, and neither contains the phrase "Schedule of Property", against a firing control of Commissioner at 12 and 7 occurrences respectively.

What the exemption actually exempts you from

s. 14A(1) empowers the Commissioner to "exempt the executor from section 14(6)". And s. 14(6) reads:

In short: a "certificate of exemption" is a certificate that the executor was excused from filing a return. It is a smaller thing than the use it is put to. It certifies that no account had to be delivered — not that the property is clear.

Its conditions are exhaustive on the face of s. 14A(1):

Land is not among those three conditions, and the power is expressly "subject to any conditions which he may specify". But both administrative texts put land in: IRD's published Small Estates procedure disapplies itself where the estate includes an interest in land, and the Administration's 2005 paper folds land into the definition of a small estate. Whether that exclusion is an exercise of the s. 14A(1) conditions power is not stated in either text.

What the presence of land removes

IRD's Small Estates passage, in its own words:

⚠ It cannot be said that what land removes is only the simplified return (IRED 63A) and the six-week standard, leaving the s. 14A(2) certificate itself untouched.

The reason is this. The Administration's 2005 paper puts land inside the definition of a small estate — below $400,000 and without landed property, business and unquoted shares — and ties that route expressly to s. 14A. IRD's live page has the same shape: the passage above runs the Certificate of Exemption and "This procedure does not apply where the estate includes an interest in land" together, in one breath. That reading treats a point about the section (s. 14A(1) has no land condition) as though it answered a question about the administration.

Three points:

• On the section: the three conditions in s. 14A(1) do not include land, and the section ends with a power to specify conditions.
• On the administration: IRD's published simplified procedure does not apply where the estate includes an interest in land, and the Administration's 2005 paper writes land into the definition of a small estate.
• Whether an estate that includes land can in practice still obtain a s. 14A(2) certificate of exemption is not answered by either text. Ask your own solicitor, or the Estate Duty Office directly.

On the standard itself: the six-week commitment is the current turnaround time the Department publishes, and it is switched off for cases involving land.

The certificate can be cancelled

s. 14A(3):

The two grounds on which it can be cancelled are the two propositions it is being relied on to disprove — that the estate exceeded $400,000, and that duty is payable — and the effect of cancellation is that the Ordinance applies "as if the exemption had not been granted".

The two documents are not alternatives

s. 23(3) is the subsection most accounts of this topic leave out, and it answers "which document" directly:

And the s. 23(1) schedule is, by its own terms, a schedule of property "upon which estate duty has been paid or is payable on the death". So: where an exemption has been granted, what is annexed to the grant is the certificate of exemption; where it has not, what is annexed is the schedule. That is decided by whether the Commissioner granted an exemption, not by anyone's preference — in an exempt estate no s. 23(1) schedule exists.

Why the buyer's side has to rely on you

purchaser appears 6 times in Cap. 111 — the proviso to s. 9, s. 14(10), the proviso to s. 18(1), the proviso to s. 23(1), s. 43(1)(b), and the proviso to s. 43(6). Every one of the six protects a purchaser or excuses him from liability. Not one confers on a purchaser any power to apply for, obtain or compel any instrument. Set that against the table above: s. 14(12) runs to the accountable person, s. 14A(1) and (2) exempt an executor and issue the certificate to the executor, s. 15(1) certifies to the court, and s. 23(1) is annexed to the grant.

The purchaser is not among the persons whom these provisions authorize to apply. The relevant instrument is obtained by the accountable person, executor or personal representative identified by the applicable provision.

What a purchaser may require, and what the statute presumes

Cap. 219 s. 13(1) draws a line: unless the contrary intention is expressed, a purchaser is entitled to require only 15 years of title. And the same section goes on, in subsections (2) to (4), to say that certified copies are sufficient and that recitals in older documents are presumed correct unless the contrary is proved.

1. The ceiling

Conveyancing and Property Ordinance (Cap. 219, consolidated 13 December 2018), s. 13(1):

Two phrases carry the section: "Unless the contrary intention is expressed" and "only". It is a default, not an entitlement fixed against the parties — the contract can raise the bar. But where the contract is silent, what the statute gives a purchaser is 15 years, not the whole chain.

2. Copies

Within the scope of what the section requires to be produced, a copy certified by a public officer or a solicitor to be a true copy is sufficient on the words of the Ordinance.

3. Recitals — how the statute handles an old death mentioned in an old deed

These two subsections are the statutory reason an old death in a title chain is usually absorbed rather than fought over. Where the death and the grant were recited in a document predating the period the vendor must prove, the purchaser is told to assume the recital correct; and where the document is 15 years or older than the contract of sale, the recital is sufficient evidence of its truth.

4. The Ordinance's silence

The Conveyancing and Property Ordinance (Cap. 219) does not mention estate duty — whereas Cap. 10 does name the duty.

5. Where the parties go when they cannot agree

*That route runs inside the transaction rather than in a further application to the Estate Duty Office — but not because a vendor is incompetent to apply. The Ordinance looks at capacity, not at which side of the contract a person sits on: the instruments run to the executor, the administrator and the accountable person, and a vendor who is himself the executor or the intended administrator is exactly the person entitled to apply. What nobody can do is apply as a purchaser* — hence the six occurrences of purchaser below, none of which confers any power to apply.

Limits

• s. 13 is about proof of title. It is not about the s. 18 charge. A presumption that a recital is correct does not discharge a charge, and no provision of Cap. 219 addresses estate duty at all.
• Every presumption in s. 13(3) and (4) is expressly rebuttable — unless the contrary is proved. (s. 13(4A) does create a conclusive presumption, but it is about powers of attorney, not about deaths.)
• s. 13(1) opens with "Unless the contrary intention is expressed." Contracts routinely say more than the statute's default.
• s. 13(5): "This section affects only the rights and obligations of the parties to a contract for the sale of land entered into after the commencement of this section" — 1 November 1984.

Why the requisition has no natural boundary

There is a record of this. In a paper issued by the Home Affairs Bureau on 14 June 2005 (LC Paper No. CB(2)1939/04-05(01)), quoting the Land Registry, the Registry's position was that under the deeds registration system in the Land Registration Ordinance (Cap. 128) there is no guarantee of the owner's title, and it is for the parties concerned to satisfy themselves that the personal representative has the title to deal with the property. (This site's summary.)

A register that does not guarantee title obliges the parties to satisfy themselves — which is why a purchaser's solicitor raises requisitions at all, and why the requisition has no statutory ceiling beyond s. 13(1), which the contract can lift.

When the certificate is not coming and the completion date is

The Ordinance itself allows the Commissioner to postpone payment until after the grant issues — s. 15(2) and (3). Paying the duty and obtaining the grant are not welded together by the statute, and the Department publishes a corresponding procedure.

What the statute provides

A second and independent route sits in s. 15(3):

And s. 15(4):

So the second of the two things s. 15(1) allows the Commissioner to certify — that payment has been postponed under subsections (2) and (3) — is a complete statutory route in its own right, with a bond and an interest cap attached.

What the Department publishes

IRD's Provisional Estate Duty Clearance Papers, in its own words:

"Without delay" is the point of the route: the grant application can go forward before the definitive certificate exists. IRD publishes three specimen security forms — UF4 (equitable charge), UF5 (memorandum of deposit) and UF8 (bank guarantee) — all three available on the Department's site.

How the two layers relate

IRD's page cites no section. The power to postpone is in s. 15(2) and (3); the published procedure has the shape set out above; which provision the Department is exercising it does not say.

What the security buys

On the terms of the UF8 specimen, the undertaking is given in consideration of the Commissioner issuing a provisional Certificate of Receipt of Estate Duty and a provisional Schedule of Property, and postponing payment of duty, interest and any penalty until the earlier of three months after the issue of the grant and six months from the date of the letter. (This site's summary.) So the route buys a defined window, not an open-ended one.

One observation the published pages do not make: UF4 still identifies the Ordinance by reference to the Revised Edition of 1983, and UF5 and UF8 still print the year of death as a blank beginning with the digits for the nineteen-hundreds. Live forms for a duty that stopped in 2006, with a twentieth-century date field.

What delay actually exposes you to

The Judiciary says there is no law limiting the time to apply for a grant. The Estate Duty Office's penalty policy says the abatement for delay decays to nothing over five years. Both are true, neither document mentions the other — and the Ordinance itself contains several limits that cut the exposure, none of which appears on either page.

Two signals, pointing opposite ways

The Judiciary's probate FAQ 9.5:

On the other side, the Estate Duty Office's penalty policy provides that the reduction given for the length of the delay decreases gradually from 30% to 0% over a range of 5 years, and that ignorance of the law, bereavement, absence of information, complexity of the estate and negligence by the legal representatives are not treated as reasonable excuse. (A PDF; summarised, not quoted, for the extraction reason given above.)

Both are true, neither page mentions the other, and together they are a trap: the court will take the application whenever it comes, while the revenue's abatement for coming late may already have run to zero — and the two excuses this reader most obviously has are the two the policy names as not reasonable. The problem is institutional rather than legal: the Judiciary is describing its own jurisdiction and the Department is describing its own discretion, and nobody owns the join.

The statute underneath the policy

"Reasonable excuse" is in the section, not a concession. s. 16(1):

And s. 27, which s. 16(1) points at, is the Commissioner's power to reduce — and it writes its own floor into the section:

s. 27 is not the only remission provision — and the other one has no floor

s. 27 carries an express floor: "provided that such duty is not reduced below the amount or rate, as may be applicable, set out in the applicable Part of Schedule 1". The Commissioner may remit or reduce a penalty, interest, or duty under it — down to Schedule 1's figure and no further.

The same Ordinance also contains s. 20, which has no such floor and is not the Commissioner's power at all.

Three differences are worth taking one at a time. First, the power is the Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury's, not the Commissioner's. Second, the words are "remit the payment of any estate duty or … order a refund of the whole or any portion of any estate duty which may have been paid" — the section states no floor, and it does not mention Schedule 1. Third, the gate is "any equitable claim … proved to his satisfaction".

And s. 21 deals with one very specific situation: successive war deaths.

That one is full remission, not a discretionary reduction. Where the same property bore estate duty twice within 8 December 1941 – 16 September 1945 on two deaths answering the section's description, the duty on the later death on that property "shall be remitted or, if paid, shall be repaid", and the property "shall not be aggregated with any other property passing on a later death for the purpose of determining the rate of estate duty". In the 25-Part table above, Parts 3 to 5 cover exactly those years.

None of the three is a power a purchaser or a purchaser's solicitor can invoke.

Interest, too, is in the Ordinance rather than only on a web page — s. 12(6):

Four limits

One. Where an exemption has been granted, the s. 24 penalties do not apply at all. s. 24(3A):

Two. Section 24 has a ceiling. s. 24(5A):

Three. The s. 14(17) penalty is an election, and one limb carries the words "(if any)".

On a literal reading: limb (b) is a penalty equal to the unpaid duty, and the subsection itself writes "(if any)"; the further penalty in s. 24(1)–(3) is likewise 3 times the duty at the applicable Part's rate. Where the estate was at or below the applicable Part's threshold, no duty was payable — and a penalty equal to nothing, or three times nothing, is nothing. What is left is the fixed level-3 amount. That is a reading of the statutory words, not a court's holding.

Four. Some things can lawfully be done before the account is delivered. s. 24(4):

Note the third purpose: "for the purpose of preparing such accounts." Using part of the estate in order to produce the return itself can be authorised in writing.

How the money behind a penalty level is fixed — and which half of it moves

Cap. 111 states its penalties as levels, not amounts. The amount comes from the Criminal Procedure Ordinance (Cap. 221) Schedule 8, where level 3 is $10,000. And Cap. 221 s. 113B(3) empowers the Chief Executive in Council to amend the amounts in Schedule 8 by regulation to reflect inflation. So the level is the fixed part and the money is the moving part — which is how the Department's own penalty policy writes it, describing $10,000 as the amount "currently" set.

If no return goes in, or the Commissioner is not satisfied: the s. 14(15) best-judgment assessment

Before an appeal there is normally an assessment — and the Ordinance provides that one can issue when nothing has been filed at all. s. 14(15):

Two triggers, both worth holding on to. The first is the Commissioner not being satisfied with an affidavit or account that was delivered — filing does not close it. The second is no affidavit or account within 6 months after the death, and the subsection says expressly "whether or not he has been required by the Commissioner so to do": the clock runs without anyone asking. On either trigger the Commissioner may assess "according to the best of his judgment" and call for payment.

The clock that follows is s. 14(15A):

So the sequence is: the six-month filing point (above) → a s. 14(15) best-judgment assessment if nothing is filed or the return is not accepted → payment within one month of notice under s. 14(15A) → an appeal within three months of notification under s. 22(1), next. The s. 16(1) double charge discussed above is a separate line, running from 12 months after the death; neither displaces the other.

If you disagree with the assessment, there is an appeal — and it has a clock

Cap. 111 s. 22(1) allows a person aggrieved by a decision under s. 14(12) or an assessment under s. 14(15) to appeal to the Court of First Instance within 3 months from the date of notification, on payment of or giving security for the duty claimed (subject to s. 22(1A), which lets the Commissioner postpone payment where an appeal is proposed, on interest not exceeding 8 per centum per annum).

Three further points in the same section:

• s. 22(1B): where the value in dispute, as alleged by the Commissioner, does not exceed $200,000, the appeal is to the District Court.
• s. 22(1C): "The amount mentioned in subsection (1B) may be amended by resolution of the Legislative Council." This is the only amount inside Cap. 111 that can be changed, and it is an appeal-forum threshold, not a duty threshold.
• s. 22(4): where requiring payment as a condition of the appeal would impose hardship, the court may allow the appeal to be brought on payment of no duty, or of such part as seems reasonable, on security.

The seven-month band: 15 July 2005 to 10 February 2006

For deaths in those seven months the duty is a flat $100. The penalty side does not merely fail to follow the duty — it runs in two opposite directions, with one family of provisions pushed up to Part 24's rates and another deemed down onto Part 25.

The duty. Schedule 1 Part 25 provides that for a person dying on or after 15 July 2005 and before 11 February 2006, where the principal value of the estate exceeds $7,500,000, the amount of estate duty payable shall be $100.

Pushed up to Part 24. s. 23(1A):

s. 24(3B) makes the same substitution for s. 24(1), (2) and (3). Part 24's rates are 5%, 10% and 15%. So penalties under s. 23(1) and s. 24 are, for this band, computed by reference to a rate geared to the value of the estate rather than to $100.

Deemed down onto Part 25 — the half that is usually missed. s. 20A(6):

s. 20A(7):

Put together: penalties under s. 23(1) and s. 24 are computed at Part 24's rates, while a penalty under s. 14(17) (or s. 42(2)) and interest under s. 12(6) are deemed to be computed on the Part 25 basis. So "the duty is $100 but the penalty scales with the estate" is half the picture, and it is the wrong half for the two provisions a late filer is most likely to meet.

Where a fixed level-3 penalty would be overtaken by a three-times-duty penalty depends on a real estate's valuation and its deductions. The Ordinance does set out the method: Schedule 1 carries the threshold and rates for all 25 Parts, and s. 32 carries the relief for an estate that only just crosses a threshold — quoted in full above.

Is there a longstop?

The Limitation Ordinance contains a twelve-year rule that fits this charge exactly — and a proviso in the same Ordinance removes proceedings by the Government for the recovery of any tax or duty from the Ordinance altogether.

Limitation Ordinance (Cap. 347, consolidated 9 July 2020), s. 19(1) — the rule that would otherwise apply:

But s. 37:

And the Interpretation and General Clauses Ordinance (Cap. 1, consolidated 31 July 2026), Schedule 8 §2, supplies who "the Crown" now is:

s. 40 closes the other door:

And Cap. 111 prescribes no period. The "limitation" in the headings of ss. 40, 41 and 45 limits the scope of the charge in the controlled-company provisions, not time. Cap. 347 itself does not mention estate duty; its single mention of tax is the proviso to s. 37.

That is what the provisions say. Whether the charge is therefore good indefinitely is a question of statutory interpretation.

The United Kingdom did the same thing — with one clock Hong Kong does not have

The United Kingdom abolished estate duty prospectively, exactly as Hong Kong did: deaths after a stated point fell outside the tax and earlier deaths stayed inside the old law. The difference is that the UK's charge on land carries a six-year longstop as well as a notice-based protection. Hong Kong has only the second.

(The effect of the two English provisions below is stated in this site's own words.)

• Finance Act 1975 s. 49(1) provides that estate duty is not to be levied on the principal value of property passing on a death occurring after the passing of that Act. That is prospective abolition — the same shape as Hong Kong's. (A common claim that the United Kingdom simultaneously wrote off its outstanding estate duty is inaccurate: a neighbouring section in the same Act dealt with obsolete other death duties, not with estate duty itself.)
• Inheritance Tax Act 1984 s. 238(1) gives a purchaser protection that turns on registration or notice — the same shape as the proviso to Cap. 111 s. 18(1).
• Inheritance Tax Act 1984 s. 238(2) provides that where property is disposed of to a purchaser in circumstances in which it does not then cease to be subject to the charge, it ceases to be subject to it at the end of six years beginning with the later of the date the tax became due and the date a full and proper account of the property was first delivered — and that subsection contains no notice condition at all.

The contrast is therefore: Hong Kong has purchaser protection with no clock; the parent jurisdiction has both. And the Hong Kong protection can be eroded by a single unilateral act — registration of a Memorial under s. 18(2).

How many, how long, how much

Across twenty-two years the dutiable proportion of the cases the Estate Duty Office finalises has barely moved — from 1.65% to about 1.09%. New cases over the last five years were 356, 355, 357, 357 and 343.

The dutiable share: three measurements over twenty-two years

<table> <caption>Sources: LC Paper No. CB(2)1778/04-05(01) (2 June 2005), ¶6 and Annex C, for 2003/04; Inland Revenue Department Annual Reports 2006-07, 2020-21, 2022-23 and 2024-25, "Figure 21 Estate duty cases". In every row the numerator and the denominator are the same measure (cases finalised), from the same source, over the same period.</caption> <thead><tr><th>Period</th><th>Dutiable</th><th>Cases finalised</th><th>Share</th></tr></thead> <tbody> <tr><td>2003/04</td><td>258</td><td>15,620</td><td>1.65% (the Administration rounds it to 1.7%)</td></tr> <tr><td>2005-06</td><td>309</td><td>17,005</td><td>1.82%</td></tr> <tr><td>2020-21 to 2024-25 (five years pooled)</td><td>20</td><td>1,838</td><td>1.09%</td></tr> <tr><td>2024-25 (single year)</td><td>6</td><td>376 (of which 370 exempt)</td><td>1.60%; 98.4% exempt</td></tr> </tbody> </table>

*Twenty-two years, 1.65% to 1.09% — essentially flat, and never above 2%. ⚠ Every numerator and denominator here is cases finalised by the Estate Duty Office: not deaths, and not a census of estates.*

Volume fell 97.9%, and the two endpoints are not the same population

New cases fell from 16,717 in 2005-06 to 343 in 2024-25 — a fall of 97.9%. That figure has to be read with the following sentence attached, or it will be misunderstood: 2005-06 was the last full year in which the tax was chargeable on new deaths, whereas every one of 2024-25's 343 cases arises from a death that had already occurred by 11 February 2006. The two ends measure different populations.

New cases across the last five years: 356 · 355 · 357 · 357 · 343

New cases across five consecutive years: 356 · 355 · 357 · 357 · 343 (2020-21 to 2024-25). A spread of 14 on a base of about 350, twenty years after abolition, with a 3.9% fall in the last of them. 2019-20 was 454. In 2024-25 that is roughly 29 new cases a month. Five figures are not enough to say the trend has bottomed out.

Set that against what the Government said in 2005. The Legislative Council Brief on the Revenue (Abolition of Estate Duty) Bill 2005 recorded that the Estate Duty Office then had an establishment of 36 staff, that it was expected to operate at full strength in 2005-06, that after the transitional period the necessary provision would be transferred from the Inland Revenue Department to the Home Affairs Bureau, and that the establishment would be reduced in line with the actual caseload in future years. (This site's summary.) Two things are observable today: the Estate Duty Ordinance is still on IRD's published list of the Ordinances it administers, and the Estate Duty Office is still at 3/F, Inland Revenue Centre, 5 Concorde Road, Kai Tak. Those tell you which department runs this work now — a reader following the 2005 record to the Home Affairs Bureau would go to the wrong place — but they do not establish whether the planned transfer of provision was ever made. That would need budget and establishment records.

These figures are not a projection; there is no official forward projection.

"Complicated" and "liable" are different things

The Administration's own breakdown for 2003/04, over a total of 15,620 cases finalised:

• Code N — 8,205 cases (52.53%): exempt and simple cases not involving landed properties, private company shares or interest in business.
• Code P — 6,498 cases (41.60%): exempt and simple cases involving landed properties, private company shares or interest in business. (That class is wider than land, and the wider label has to travel with the percentage or the figure is mis-scoped.)
• Code D — 917 cases (5.87%): dutiable or complicate cases.

And the same paper puts the dutiable count for that year at 258.

A stated inference, drawn from the legend rather than from the table: a dutiable case is necessarily D-coded, so the 258 sit inside the 917 — leaving 659 cases, 4.2% of the 15,620, that were complicated and owed nothing.

So "my case is complicated" is not evidence that duty is owed. On the only breakdown the Government has published, 71.9% of the D-coded cases owed nothing.

How long? No current answer — and a twenty-year-old one

The Estate Duty Office publishes no current service standard for a case involving an interest in land. The only current turnaround commitment is the six-week Certificate of Exemption quoted above — and the Department's own words disapply that procedure "where the estate includes an interest in land".

Twenty years ago there was one. IRD's Annual Report on Performance Pledge for 2004-05 and for 2005-06 each sets out, under Estate Duty Affidavits / Statements in lieu of Affidavits, three classes of case, each with a target and the outcome the Department reported for that year. The table below is this site's summary of those two reports. Read every cell together with its column heading: a target is what the Department undertook, an outcome is what it reported achieving, and reading an outcome as a promise overstates what was ever undertaken.

<table> <caption>Source: Inland Revenue Department, <em>Annual Report on Performance Pledge</em> 2004-05 (performance for the 12 months ending 31 March 2005) and 2005-06 (12 months ending 31 March 2006), section <em>Estate Duty Affidavits / Statements in lieu of Affidavits</em>; the versions cited are pam33e_2005.pdf and pam33e_2006.pdf. <strong>Every figure below is that year's target or that year's reported outcome. All of it is historical. None of it is a current service commitment.</strong></caption> <thead><tr><th>Class of case (assessment or certificate issued)</th><th>Target</th><th>Outcome 2004-05</th><th>Outcome 2005-06</th></tr></thead> <tbody> <tr><td>Exempt and simple, <strong>not</strong> involving landed property, private shares or business interests — within 6 weeks</td><td>98%</td><td>98.9%</td><td>98.4%</td></tr> <tr><td>Exempt and simple, <strong>involving</strong> landed property, private shares or business interests — within 6 months in 2004-05; within 3 months from April 2005</td><td>85%</td><td>98% (on the 6-month measure)</td><td>93.8% (on the 3-month measure)</td></tr> <tr><td>The same class — within 12 months</td><td>99%</td><td>100%</td><td>100%</td></tr> <tr><td>Dutiable or complicated — within 1 year</td><td>55%</td><td>63.8%</td><td>63.2%</td></tr> <tr><td>Dutiable or complicated — within 2 years</td><td>80%</td><td>86.9%</td><td>87.2%</td></tr> <tr><td>Dutiable or complicated — within 3 years</td><td>90%</td><td>92.2%</td><td>93.3%</td></tr> <tr><td>Cases processed that year: land class / dutiable-or-complicated class</td><td>—</td><td>6,791 / 730</td><td>7,541 / 736</td></tr> </tbody> </table>

Four things have to be said with that table, or it reads as a commitment that is still in force.

• The six months became three months in April 2005. The 2004-05 volume's Work Plan for 2005-06 lists four enhanced pledges taking effect from April 2005, one of them the exempt-and-simple class involving landed property, private-company shares or an interest in a business, moving from 6 months to 3. The 2005-06 volume then reports against the 3-month measure and footnotes that the 2004-05 target had been 85% within 6 months.
• 2005-06 is the last volume. That volume itself records that, following the Revenue (Abolition of Estate Duty) Ordinance 2005, no estate duty affidavit or statement in lieu need be filed for a person who died on or after 11 February 2006. No estate-duty turnaround standard for any later year was published in that series.
• A performance pledge is not a statutory deadline. Cap. 111 sets the Commissioner no time limit for issuing an assessment or a certificate. Every figure above is a target the Department set for itself, changed once (point 1), and was free to withdraw. The table tells you what that department undertook twenty years ago. It does not tell you how long a filing made today will take.
• Every cell is a proportion of cases finalised, not a forecast for any case. The land class ran to 6,791 cases in 2004-05 and the dutiable-or-complicated class to 730; today the whole office receives roughly three hundred and fifty new cases a year (above). The denominator changed and so did the office; a twenty-year-old outcome cannot predict a current waiting time.

A second published duration figure comes from 2003/04, and it agrees with the table above: of some 920 more complicated cases, tax assessment for the majority took more than six months to complete, and for 169 of them — 18% — assessment took more than two years. Re-based to all cases finalised that year, 169 of 15,620 is 1.08%, about 1 in 92. That figure is twenty-one years old. For what it is worth as a cross-check: the 2004-05 Performance Pledge volume reports 938 dutiable-or-complicated cases processed in 2003-04 and an outcome of 81% within two years — so about 19% took longer than two years, against the Legislative Council paper's 18%. The two denominators are not the same measure — one is the Annex C classification, the other that year's "cases processed" — so the two figures corroborate each other but cannot be added, netted or merged.

How much?

There is no reliable published price for this step.

A comparable quotation would need to identify which document the quoted fee covers. As set out above, these are different documents under different sections — a s. 14(12) assessment certificate, a s. 14A(2) certificate of exemption, a s. 23(1) schedule of property, a certificate of payment or receipt, provisional clearance papers. A single number does not identify which service it prices.

Two common questions

• "What will I have to pay now?" — The actual duty needs a professional valuation. The table above tells you which Part and which threshold applied to a death of a given date — that is, whether the death was within the charge at all.
• "Can the flat be recorded in the probate papers as held on trust, so that it never forms part of the estate?" — This one needs its own paragraph. The schedule under s. 23(1) is a document under the hand of the Commissioner, annexed to a grant issued by the court; and dealing, without lawful authority or reasonable excuse, with estate property not set out in it attracts the penalty in s. 23(1) — with s. 23(3)(b) extending the same penalties, in an exempt estate, to property not disclosed under s. 14A(1). How a particular asset is to be described in an individual probate filing depends on the family's actual arrangements, the payment record and any other proceedings, and the declaration responsibility lies with the signatory.

If no grant was ever taken out

If there is a death in the title chain for which nobody ever took out a grant, the problem is not a missing certificate. Where the death was intestate, it is that no one has yet been given authority to deal with the property — under Cap. 10 s. 10 the estate vests in the Official Administrator until administration is granted. Where there was a will, the executor's authority already exists; what is missing is the proof of it that a purchaser will require.

On that, the Judiciary says two things.

• On time: there is no law limiting the time to apply for a grant after the death, but reasons for the delay should be given in the relevant specified form (FAQ 9.5, quoted above).
• And this is the one respect in which the old regime favours you. The Judiciary's probate FAQ 9.4 addresses the applicant who is not sure what the estate consists of. Its effect is that where the deceased died before 11 February 2006, the Estate Duty Office of the Inland Revenue Department can assist in establishing the position of the estate; whereas where the deceased died on or after that date, the applicant carries the responsibility of checking and obtaining the details of the estate from the relevant authorities, and the Probate Registry has no authority to check or obtain that information and its staff will not verify it. (This site's summary.)

So a death before 11 February 2006 comes with one advantage over a later one: there is an office that can help you find out what the estate actually consists of.

The procedure for the grant itself — priority, sureties, time limits: see our guide to grants of probate and letters of administration .

Quick reference

<table> <caption>This table restates provisions quoted above. Estate Duty Ordinance (Cap. 111), version in force 1 July 2022; Non-Contentious Probate Rules (Cap. 10 sub. leg. A), 16 January 2020; Conveyancing and Property Ordinance (Cap. 219), 13 December 2018.</caption> <thead><tr><th>Date of death</th><th>Cap. 111 applies?</th><th>Document usually in play</th><th>Who can apply</th><th>Provisions</th></tr></thead> <tbody> <tr><td>On or after 11 February 2006</td><td>No</td><td>Cap. 10 ss. 60B, 60C, 60K certificates and notices (see the grant of probate guide)</td><td>per those sections</td><td>Cap. 111 s. 2; Cap. 10 ss. 60B, 60C, 60K</td></tr> <tr><td>15 July 2005 to 10 February 2006</td><td>Yes (Schedule 1 Part 25)</td><td>Certificate of exemption, or a schedule of property with a certificate of payment / receipt — depending on the route</td><td>executor / personal representative</td><td>Cap. 111 ss. 14A(2), 23(1), 23(3), 23(1A), 24(3B), 20A</td></tr> <tr><td>Before 15 July 2005</td><td>Yes (Schedule 1 Parts 1–24, by date)</td><td>As above; and provisional clearance papers where the certificate cannot issue</td><td>executor / personal representative</td><td>Cap. 111 ss. 2, 14A, 15, 18, 23; Cap. 10A r. 43</td></tr> <tr><td>Any date</td><td>—</td><td>Proof of title a purchaser may require (15 years by default; the contract can raise it)</td><td>purchaser (but cannot apply for any estate-duty document)</td><td>Cap. 219 ss. 12, 13; Cap. 111 ss. 14(10), 18(1) proviso</td></tr> </tbody> </table>