The Ministry of Finance yesterday made public the names of 330 individuals, each of whose unpaid taxes exceeded NT$10 million -- and 25 companies that each failed to pay at least NT$100 million in taxes.
"As of June, these tax evaders owed the government a total of NT$21.8 billion in personal income, inheritance, gift, commodity, and business taxes," said Nelson Yu (
Among them, Mao Chu Enterprise (
In the category of individual tax evaders, Tainan City's Bao Chien-cheng (
The ministry refused to comment on the long time gap since the actual event, except to say the case is "ongoing."
Taipei's Hsieh Chang-hsiung (
Yu said that while most of the tax evaders it named are under great financial stress and could no longer afford to pay their taxes, some of them are likely to have intentionally avoided making the annual payment. All listed tax evaders have been forbidden to leave the country, however, some of them have been hard to track down.
"Since their whereabouts are hard to locate, some still remain out of the taxation offices' reach, leading extravagant lives driving Benz [Mercedes] and owning properties," Yu said.
Yu also said that some tax evaders registered their properties under the names of relatives and, therefore, the government has no way of confiscating their properties.
After making public identities of the nation's tax evaders, the taxation department will use the courts to ask them to cough up tax payments, Yu said.
He, however, said it was difficult to track down tax evaders and collect overdue taxes especially since the decision of the courts are only valid for a period of five years.
Yu added that the taxation department may also consider continuing the practice of posting names of tax evaders in order to warn the scofflaws and damage their credit on a regular basis in the future.
The big-time overdue taxes, however, only accounted for 2 percent of the nation's NT$1 trillion tax incomes annually.
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