OP:
https://lihkg.com/thread/1637669/page/1
[Civil Disobedience] How to pay your taxes/rates/water bill and make the government suffer a loss legally
by Brave Kong Girl
I believe no one wants to pay the government. But as a complete boycott is not possible, let me share with you a way to make the government suffer a loss legally by paying your bills.
The government has to pay an extra dime to other organizations for every dime you spend.
We usually use PPS/Credit Card/Online Banking, and other online payment means to pay taxes. None of these organizations are government-owned. They charge the government transaction fees for every transaction. You can check the government website for those records.
I have fact-checked this theory. According to the current contract between credit card companies and the government, let's take BOC as an example, the transaction fees for each transaction is $1.x. As for PPS, the transaction fees for each transaction is $2. The HSBC/HASE Internet banking transaction fees are even more pricey. The Internet Banking service of Jetco charges the least for transaction fees.
Transaction fees are charged to the government, not the payers.
What if we start to pay our taxes dollar by dollar instead of paying the full sum in one go? Meaning for every $1 you pay, the government has to pay $2 transaction fees to the banking service provider. This also means that the government has to pay more transaction fees than actually receiving the taxpayer's money.
What do you need to do?
Login to your PPS/HSBC/HASE while you're at work, pay $1.X each time and do that 10 times a day. You can pay your tax/rates/government rent/water bill over the course of a dozen days. I'll use PPS as an example for you:
Why do you have to do it over the course of a dozen days? I don't want everyone to repeat the process in front of the computer a couple of hundred times on one single day. It'd be much easier if you take 5 minutes of your day to do so over the course of a dozen days. But if you don't mind, you can also pay your bills this way within one single day.
Is it legal?
What law can you break for paying your bills? I did this a few years ago during the Umbrella Revolution. The Board of Inland Revenue even printed a dozen of receipts to me, asking me to sign and confirm those were payments I made. I wanted to sign the receipts off with "I want genuine universal suffrage" at that time.
Does the government have any counter-mechanism?
The government may try to renegotiate terms and conditions with the vendors as they see an increase in such transactions. But Li Ka-Shing, the most powerful yellow ribbon in Hong Kong, actually owns PPS. It makes no sense not to make as much money as possible from the government right now, given that the contract has been signed and the deal is sealed.
How do you keep track of the amount you've already paid?
There's no need to waste your time on keeping track, just do a rough estimate. The more you pay, the more transaction fees the government needs to pay. If you pay more than you need to, the government has to pay you back, let them do the math. The tax return is complicated for the government to handle. Many people have resigned from the Treasury recently; the Treasury is understaffed.
If you pay more than you should have, the IRD will refund you with a check. The cheque will be mailed to your most recent address.