Print

Mail

wiki links

AmCham welcomes trade policy changes

The Taipei-based American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) welcomes recent policy changes made by the Taiwanese government in the retail, tax and transport sectors, saying the decisions effectively resolved protracted issues covering a broad swathe of concerns.

“Getting solutions to three issues for three different committees was a nice way to end the summer,” AmCham president Andrea Wu (吳王小珍) was quoted as saying in last month’s issue of the AmCham monthly publication, Topics.

“Let’s hope we can maintain a similar momentum through the rest of the year,” she said.

Wu was referring to Taiwan’s recent liberalization of imports from China by removing tableware from the banned list, the clarification of the scope of “Taiwan-sourced income” for income tax purposes and allowing the use of electronic invoices to help expedite express cargo shipments.

The government’s prohibition on imports of made-in-China porcelain and chinaese tableware and kitchenware has been one of the priority items of the AmCham Retail Committee for the past several years.

The article said it was a particularly frustrating issue for the committee because the rationale for the ruling appeared to be “nebulous,” as although the local ceramics industry was not equipped to produce Western-style tableware in large quantities, the ceramics manufacturers association kept objecting to any relaxation of the ban on Chinese imports.

The Industrial Development Bureau of the Ministry of Economic Affairs decided in August to make the category as permissible for import.

Regarding “Taiwan-sourced income,” AmCham’s Tax Committee has long appealed to the Ministry of Finance to clear up confusion over the tax treatment of payments to overseas entities for services performed entirely offshore.

Last month, the ministry issued a ruling titled Guidelines for Determining Taiwan-sourced Income as Defined under Article 8 of the Income Tax Law (所得稅法), that provides just such clarification along the lines that the Chamber suggested, the article said.
This story has been viewed 718 times.