The Cabinet approved amendments to the Land Tax Act (
Under the present system, homeowners are entitled to land value incremental tax rates of up to 40 percent and can only enjoy the 10 percent rate once in a lifetime when selling a property.
The proposed amendments will need further review by the legislature and are expected to take effect at the beginning of next year at the earliest, the Cabinet said following a regular weekly meeting hosted by Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄).
"These new measures will fit most people's needs in terms of selling and buying new homes," Chang said.
In 2002, the government temporarily halved the land value incremental tax -- a capital gains tax on property transactions -- for a trial period of two years and later extended it by an extra year in a bid to revive the sagging real estate market.
In 2005, the legislature approved amendments to permanently cut the tax by 20 percent, lowering the maximum rate to 40 percent from 60 percent.
The amendments announced yesterday and submitted to the legislature for further approval will allow homeowners to enjoy the 10 percent rate more than once, although some conditions must first be met.
To qualify for the lower tax rate, homeowners must have possessed their household registration at the location for more than six years and must prove they never leased or used the property as an office or for any other commercial purposes in the five years prior to the sale, the Ministry of Finance said in a statement issued later yesterday.
Restrictions also apply to land size, with only land plots measuring less than 45 pings in urban areas and 105 pings in rural areas qualifying for the lower tax rate, the statement said.
Deputy Minister of Finance Chang Sheng-ford (
He said the new regime would mean government losses of NT$6 billion (US$182 million) to NT$8 billion in annual tax revenues.
"But we are quite certain that this new mechanism will reinvigorate the local real estate business," Chang Sheng-ford said after the Cabinet meeting.
He said ministry data showed that homeowners would buy and sell their properties an average of three to four times in a lifetime. This was the main reason behind the decision to amend the law and make it more flexible, he said.
Tax specialists had long argued that in order to make efficient use of the nation's land, the government should reduce the tax rate on land transactions.
However, the new tax measure will be of limited help to the housing market, said Su Chi-jung (
During the past six years, despite the climbing price of land sparked by a sizzling property market, the announced land value -- the basis on which the land value incremental tax is calculated -- has changed very little, with a 3 percent increase each year, Su said.
The raise in the announced land value means that even without the preferential tax system, homeowners did not have to pay much land value incremental tax, he said.
The tax is even slimmer for apartment owners in high-rise buildings, as the share of land they own is even smaller, Su said.
"The incentive is not big enough to push people to sell or buy property," Su said. "Real demand and finance are the priorities for homebuyers in decision-making, not the tax rate."
Lai Cheng-i (
The nation's home ownership ratio is at 87 percent and many homeowners have more than one apartment or house, Lai said.
"The new tax measure will energize sales in the housing market and support the sector," he said.
The move also demonstrated the government's intention to lift the property sector. The positive sentiment should bolster the construction industry and optimism in the sector, he said.
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