Chances are, if you haven’t been including rent payments in your taxes, the owner isn’t paying taxes on the rental income. If they want to keep your deposit, and it goes to court, could be more expensive and troublesome for them. As @Andrew said, leverage
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You can only be charged for damage beyond normal wear and tear in a standard rental agreement, cleaning, earthquake cracks etc. are not your problem.
Courts are also pretty harsh on shitty landlords. Some have received prison sentences for abusing their tenants .
So it depends what’s in the contract.
In the contract !!!
But…you should also check the contract has legal clauses…for instance there are prohibitions against landlords enforcing certain things.
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Yes ive already cited as much as i could out of the contract, still seems like theres nothing i could do, other than maybe get a lawyer but that would be more expensive than the losses.
Contact with tsui mama, plenty of references to them in this forum if you search for contract topics.
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For all reading this. When you terminate a lease, there will be a handover of the Apartment. That’s an important date and should be planed out carefully. First, you can choose any date you want including Sundays non working hours etc. There are very limited reasons for the landlord to refuse any of those dates.
Have this apointment days before the lease ends.
Bring a protocol which both of you will sign.
Tell the landlord you prefer him to bring your deposit to that meeting.
Take extensive pictures befor moving in and before moving out.
If the landlord has any complains during the handover, either write this onto the protocol including the costs.
Or if the costs are too high (unreasonabl) don’t give him the key and fix it yourself.
The protocol should be signed by both parties.
I think you need to give the apartment broom clean, no more no less.
Have a protocol at the handover when you move in and one when you move out.
Maybe we could create one here English/Chinese for print out.
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You could ask him if he wants you to get a lawyer.
Actually, if you just file the taxes you’re owed it would make up the difference, his choice. He can give you back your deposit or you can file the taxes. His choice.
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For the times I managed to successfully get money back from a landlord in the type of scenario described by the OP I did it by meeting the landlord and saying that I would give the keys back there and then in exchange for a fair amount of deposit back, otherwise I was not returning the keys. Then when the fair amount of deposit was not immediately forthcoming I just got up and walked away. Sure enough they called me back and returned the deposit minus a reasonable amount in exchange for the keys. I had this scenario play out more than once. 
I’ve also had the opposite scenario of Landords who just returned the entire deposit and waved me away as I suggested that they could deduct something for cleaning.
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