■ Online sales may be taxed
A tax official warned online merchants yesterday that taxes may be levied to online transactions this year.
Chen Wen-tzong (陳文宗), deputy commissioner at the National Tax Administration of Taipei, said that individuals who have sold NT$60,000-worth of commodities over the Internet a month will be required to pay businesses taxes for their online capital gains.
Chen said that the tax administration has requested the nation's two biggest online auctioneers eBay Taiwan and Yahoo-Kimo Inc (雅虎奇摩) to inform its online sellers to file businesses incomes in their tax reports this year.
However, he didn't specify the exact timetable for the launch of an online-transaction taxation measure since the government is not capable of making a comprehensive tax inspection.
■ CPC mulls price hikes
Chinese Petroleum Corp (中油) chairman Kuo Chin-tsai (郭進財) said yesterday that the company may raise prices of wholesale gasoline and diesel next month if prices of New York's benchmark light crude stand on more than US$37.1 per barrel at that time.
The state-run oil refiner may hike the price for the fourth time in the year, as world oil prices bubbled back close to record highs yesterday.
"We bought in crude oil for US$37.1 per barrel and fixed the current rates, but I don't think we can hold on to the rates anymore if the oil costs keep hiking by the end of this month," Kuo said.
■ China investment up 46%
Taiwanese companies' investment in China rose 46 percent last month from a year ago as companies expanded their factories in the world's seventh-largest economy.
Approved investment increased to US$445 million from US$304 million, the Investment Commission said on its Web site. In the first four months, Taiwanese companies' investment in China rose to US$1.74 billion from US$1.42 billion, the statement said.
Taiwanese investment rose to a record US$4.6 billion last year.
Overseas companies' investment in Taiwan almost tripled to US$418 million last month from US$139 million a year ago, the commission said.
■ Current-account surplus shrinks
The current-account surplus, the broadest measure of the flow of goods and services, fell 24 percent from a year earlier in the first quarter to US$5.8 billion, the central bank said in a statement yesterday.
The surplus reached an all-time high of US$7.9 billion in the final quarter of last year.
The surplus on the financial account, which measures investment flows, turned to an outflow of $1.6 billion from an inflow of US$4.5 billion in the previous quarter, it said.
■ TSMC buys back shares
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufa-cturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) bought NT$596 million (US$18 million) worth of shares to try to stem declines in stock prices yesterday.
TSMC bought 10.9 of million its own shares at an average NT$54.47 a share, the company said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
■ EMG eyes Panama deal
Cable television operator Eastern Multimedia Group (EMG, 東森多媒體集團) plans to expand to Panama, the Panamanian government reported on Wednesday.
A communique from the presidency said a representative of EMG met with Vice President Arturo Vallarino to discuss the operation, which involves transmission of the group's ETT America service now available in the US.
Vallarino promised to help the project get underway.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last