The Ministry of Finance yesterday promised to seek legislative approval to iron out taxation dis-agreements with the Chinese Securities Association (
Major brokerages in the group on Tuesday said they would stop issuing share warrants to protest what they feel is an excessive tax rate.
The move is expected to cut government tax revenue by at least NT$3.4 billion a year.
The association's board decided to halt issuing share warrants immediately because of the 25 percent tax levied -- a rate which exceeds the typical 15 percent to 20 percent profit margin brokerages earn from these issues, according to the association.
That halt may reduce stock market turnover by NT$470 billion a year, the association said.
The ministry issued a written statement in response yesterday, saying that Minister of Finance Lin Chuan (林全) had met with association chairman Chien Hung-wen (簡鴻文) early yesterday in an effort to reach an understanding on the controversy.
Chien had previously urged the government to revise the Income Tax Law (
But he has yet to persuade the government of the merit of his complaint.
Nelson Yu (
Yu noted that the legislature has twice vetoed revisions to the law because the private sector insisted on a retroactive clause.
Yu called on the association to call off its boycott and wait for a legislative review so that it would not create what he called a "lose-lose" situation between the private sector and the government.
Brokerages posted combined pretax profit of NT$4.7 billion from issuing share warrants from 1997 -- when they first began issuing the warrants -- until 2002, according to the latest available figures from the association.
Brokerages had to pay a total of NT$9.7 billion in taxes during that time, the association said.
Brokerages have refused to pay the tax and have filed an administrative lawsuit against the government, saying the tax should be levied only after their hedging costs are deducted.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the