Ruling lawmakers yesterday challenged the Ministry of Finance to suspend securities transaction, inheritance and gift taxes in an attempt to invigorate the stock market and turn Taiwan into a regional financial hub.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) said that she and other colleagues were drafting a bill that would authorize the ministry to scrap the securities transaction levy for up to a year to encourage investors to buy local shares.
Lu said her bill would be more effective than the Cabinet’s measure in shoring up the TAIEX.
On Sept. 10, the Cabinet proposed halving the tax from the current 0.3 percent to 0.15 percent for six months, starting next month, after the benchmark index slumped for an entire week.
During a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee, Lu appealed to Minister of Finance Lee Sush-der (李述德).
“The ministry should demonstrate more boldness and accept our bill instead,” Lu said.
Sun Ta-chien (孫大千), another KMT lawmaker, said the ministry should consider abrogating inheritance and gift taxes altogether to be competitive with Hong Kong and Singapore.
Sun said he doubted Taiwan could successfully lure foreign capital if it keeps its inheritance and gift taxes after Hong Kong and Singapore axed theirs.
In related news, the minister said that state-owned banks hold about NT$10 billion (US$312 million) in bonds and other investment products related to the financially beleaguered Lehman Brothers Holdings.
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
RSS