■ New tax deductible passed
The legislature yesterday passed an amendment to the Income Tax Law (所得稅法) that will help reduce the taxpayer's burden by making national health insurance premium a deductible item starting next year. The amendment sets no maximum for such exemption, which means that people can charge the full amount of premium paid as a deductible. The amendment is applicable only to taxpayers who file their income tax using "Itemized Deduction," and not "Standard Deduction." Based on the Ministry of Finance's estimates, the change will benefit about 1.6 million households, while the national treasury will suffer a loss of about NT$4.5 billion per year.
■ Refiner upgrading CDU
Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said it plans to close a refinery unit for maintenance and capacity expansion from June 20. Formosa Petrochemical will shut one of the three crude distillation units (CDU) at its 510,000 barrels-a-day refinery in Mailiao Township (麥寮), Yunlin County, for 50 days, spokesman Lin Keh-yen (林克彥) said yesterday by phone. The company plans to restart the closed CDU on Aug. 10, he said. The refiner will expand the capacity of the CDU, which turns crude oil into products such as gasoline and diesel, by 20 percent to 180,000 barrels a day. The other two CDUs, which have a combined capacity of 360,000 barrels a day, have had similar upgrades and will continue to operate at normal rates. The expansion will boost Formosa Petrochemical's total oil-refining capacity to 540,000 barrels a day, allowing it to sell more products overseas and take advantage of growing global demand to help counter stagnant domestic sales. ■ First-quarter car sales down
The production value of the domestic auto industry amounted to NT$86.62 billion (US$2.7 billion) in the first quarter of the year, down 15.1 percent over the year-earlier figure, according to tallies released yesterday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs. While the production value of assembled cars declined 18.6 percent to NT$49.02 billion in the first quarter, that of automobile parts and components fell 10.1 percent to NT$3.76 billion. In the first quarter of this year, 125,000 cars were sold, down 10.2 percent year on year. The officials said the market demand for cars was relatively low in the first quarter of this year because promotional packages offered by sellers last year had already moved many local owners to replace their old cars. A total of 514,000 cars were sold last year, the highest figure over the past 10 years.
■ Taiwan lags in ADSL data rate
The data rates of the nation's Internet services are slower than that of neighboring countries, including Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore, although their fees are higher, according to the results of a survey released on Thursday by the Consumers' Foundation. The fastest ADSL data rates in Taiwan are 12M/1M, compared with Japan's 47M/3M and 50M/3M, Hong Kong's 6M/640K, and Singapore's 10M/1M, the survey shows. In terms of broadband Internet service, the monthly fees for 1M is US$41.43 for Taiwan's HiNet, compared with US$34.02 to US$52.05 in Japan, US$51.33 in Hong Kong, and US$43.11 in Singapore.
■ NT dollar strengthens
The New Taiwan dollar gained ground against its US counterpart, advancing NT$0.074 to close at NT$32.038 on the Taipei foreign exchange market yesterday. Turnover was US$917 million.
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to