Online tax filings popular
More than 60 percent of all tax returns for last year that had been filed by Friday were filed online, Ministry of Finance statistics showed.
A total of just more than 1.97 million tax returns had been filed by last week, with 1.23 million of those being filed via the Internet, the tallies showed.
As the last week ahead of the tax-filing deadline usually sees a surge in the number of returns filed online, the number of online tax filings is expected to surpass half of the total for the year for the first time.
The latest ministry statistics released yesterday morning showed that 1.56 million tax returns have been filed, compared with 1.48 million for the same date last year.
The deadline for filing tax returns for this year is Monday.
FSC plans draft amendment
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday approved draft amendments to relax regulations on listed companies which plan to buy back their shares from the open market.
Once the deregulation has been kick-started, listed companies will no longer need to report share buy-back plans to the commission after filing to the local stock exchange, the commission said in a statement.
The nation’s listed companies would also be allowed to quote prices of planned buy-back shares during trading sessions, the commission said. Formerly, listed companies could only quote share prices 30 minutes after the stock market opens so as not to manipulate opening prices.
But no companies will be allowed to quote prices before the market begins trading, the commission said.
BlackBerry 'highly secure'
The Canadian maker of BlackBerry, involved in a security scrap with India, has promised customers it will not allow New Delhi to read text messages sent on its mobiles.
India, battling a host of insurgencies in places ranging from Muslim-majority Kashmir to the northeast, has raised fears the popular device made by Research in Motion (RIM) could be used by terrorists to communicate.
RIM said it had held talks with the Indian government over encryption in its BlackBerries and wished to “assure customers” that it was committed to “serving security-conscious businesses in the Indian market with highly secure” products that “satisfy the needs of both business and government.”
“Governments have a wide range of resources and methodologies to satisfy national security and law enforcement needs without compromising commercial security requirements,” RIM said in a statement yesterday.
US seminar in Taichung
The commercial section of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) will join the American State Office Association (ASOA) and the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) in holding a seminar in Taichung focusing on US trade and investment opportunities on May 29, an AIT press release said yesterday.
“We would like to cordially invite firms in the Taichung area that are interested in exploring investment in the US to attend the event,” the press release said.
The seminar is free of charge and people can contact ASOA specialist Bonny Yu at bonny@idahoasia.org to register.
NT dollar loses ground
The NT dollar lost ground against the US currency owing to foreign capital outflows and closed NT$0.033 lower at NT$30.540 on the Taipei Forex Inc yesterday.
A total of US$911 million changed hands during the day’s trading.
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