eTAX

On 14 March 2008, I attended the eTAX seminar organized by the Inland Revenue Department (IRD). It was also the 60th Anniversary Celebration Ceremony of the IRD, a remarkable day witnessing how technology brings changes to our lives.

The seminar introduced the development of tax services in Hong Kong, from the very beginning of employing abacus 60 years ago, to the latest development eTAX, which allows taxpayers to keep track of their tax position and manage their tax affairs online.

Currently eTAX only offers personalized tax services, but the IRD is planning to include tax services for employers, corporations into eTAX in the future. I am pleased to see the effort IRD devoted to implement ICT into its services to serve the community. For more information on eTAX, please visit www.gov.hk/etax.

(Left to right: CK Sin, Professor K.C. Chan, Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury and Mrs. Alice Lau, Commissioner of Inland Revenue)

IT Voter Registration

The election of the 4th term Legislative Council will be held on 7 September 2008. With mandate from the people, the Legislative Council is an important channel for monitoring the work of the Government. For the prosperity and development of our industry and society, I urge you to register as IT voter before 16 May so that you can cast your vote in the coming election. Please visit our thematic website (http://www.sinchungkai.org.hk/ITvoter) on voter registration to have further information.

If you have any comments on IT voter registration and eTAX, please do share your view by dropping me a few lines at cksin@sinchungkai.org.hk.

CK Sin

Panels

• Follow-up actions on the issues relating to Internet disruptions caused by earthquake damage to undersea cables
• Progress update on the implementation of Film Development Fund

Panel on Commerce and Industry
Next meeting: 15 April 2008 [Agenda]

• Copyright protection in the digital environment
• Hong Kong Special Administrative Region's participation in the World Exposition 2010 Shanghai China

Motions

9 April 2008

• Raising the limit of university places for publicly-funded degree programmes
• Elderly housing policy

News

Appointment of Government Chief Information Officer (GCIO)

On 26 March 2008, the Government announced its appointment of Mr. Jeremy Richard Godfrey as the new GCIO. For details, please click here.

Change of hotline numbers for three do-not-call registers

The OFTA has unified the hotline numbers for registration of the three do-not-call registers for fax messages, short messages and pre-recorded telephone messages, the new registration hotline now is 1835000. For more info, please click here.

Activities

WTISD 2008

Jointly organized by CAHK and the Office of Mr. Sin Chung Kai, WTISD is an event aiming at bringing young people’s attention to the ICT industry. A series of activities will be held in coming months. For details of WTISD, please click here.

Lucifer Chu: Web 2.0, Creative Commons and the Opensource Opencourse Prototype System (OOPS)

Organized by Journalism and Media Studies Centre, HKU and ISOC HK. Mr. Chu’s talk will focus on the trend of Web 2.0, its implications, the importance of Creative Commons and his experience of applying it on the OOPS project.

As an elected legislator, I always love to know your views. If you have anything would like to share with me, you can either email me or make an appointment for an office visit or home visit. Please leave your name, contact number, and discussion topic via email, and my office will follow up your request with phone calls accordingly.