The treasury took in NT$293.7 billion (US$9 billion) in tax revenues last month, a 57.6 percent jump from a year ago, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
The biggest increase came from income tax revenues, which rose 72.1 percent from last year to record NT$228.4 billion.
Among them, business income tax soared by 164.7 percent to NT$111.7 billion and personal income tax increased 29 percent to NT$116.7 billion as the tax-filing deadline was postponed to June 1 this year, said Lee Li-shu (
For the first six months of the year, taxation totaled NT$898.8 billion, up 2.5 percent from last year. As the figure accounts for 61.2 percent of the target set for the whole year, Lee estimated that tax revenues this year were highly likely to surpass the government-set target.
Income from securities transaction tax rose by 59.5 percent to NT$47.7 billion during the January-to-June period due to increased stock transactions. The average daily stock turnover in April and May broke the NT$100 billion mark to reach NT$123.9 billion and NT$133.1 billion, respectively.
The figure dropped to NT$91.2 billion last month, the data showed.
Lee declined to predict share performances for the next six months, saying the market was easily affected by unexpected events, especially political developments, she said.
During the first half of the year, income tax grew by 3 percent to NT$402.5
billion, value-added tax edged up by 1.6 percent to NT$113.6 billion and
house tax revenues rose by 3.3 percent to NT$49.9 billion.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained