Landlord not giving Rental Receipts

What is the legal stance of landlords providing rental receipts after a lease has expired? And can we take legal action against the landlord to repay us any money we have to pay in tax due to not receiving the rental receipts in time?


Brief backgroud of the story...


Our lease expired in October 2004 but we are continuing to live in the flat and continue to pay rent based on what we were paying previously. Since October, we've not received any rental receipts and when we approached the landlord about getting them back her response was "we do not have a lease, she does not have to pay us rental receipts".


We pay what our rate was on the previous contract, every month, via direct deposit, and when asking about getting receipts for the money we've paid her, she said that "people deposit money into other people's accounts all the time for different reasons and because we do not have a lease, we could not prove this was for rent"


This has been going on for a while with no end in sight, and in the meantime, the time to submitt our rental recepts to our company has pased, so we'll have to pay tax on that portion of our salary package set aside for rent. What action can we take to get the rental receipts and the tax money back?

The landlord is being very difficult, even after presenting them with the LANDLORD AND TENANT (CONSOLIDATION) ORDINANCE chaper 7 clause 19a. Unfortunately, I can see this being dragged out, and eventually going to court. Does anyone have recommendations for property lawyers that will not charge an arm and a leg. Our tax savings willl only be about HK$15,000/year plus HK$20,000 for getting out deposit back (I get the feeling that they will try to withhold it) and I don't want to pay the that much, or more, in legal fees.

No you cannot ask for the tax money back. The only course of action you have to ask the landlord to give you a receipt. Douglas. dkoh@rongzi.com