The Cabinet yesterday approved an amendment that will prohibit financially troubled businesses from raising capital by selling bonds, bills or notes and using the interest payments as a tax deductible.
If approved by the legislature, the amendment would help reduce tax evasion and promote equitable taxation, the Ministry of Finance said in a statement.
The amendment proposes that starting next year, companies that have an excessively high debt in proportion to their equity would be barred from using their interest expense as a tax deductible.
The debt-to-equity ratio was not stipulated in the amendment, but the Ministry of Finance said the internationally accepted ratio is 3:1, or a debt level that is twice its equity.
Businesses in the financial sector — banks, credit cooperatives, financial holding companies, bills financial firms, insurance companies and brokerage dealers — will be exempt from the regulations.
The Cabinet also approved an amendment that will allow shipping companies to use tonnage tax as an alternative to business income tax.
The amendment, subject to approval by the legislature, would allow shipping firms to choose to have their income taxed similar to companies in other sectors or to use tonnage as the basis for calculating annual taxable income.
Both methods will be subject to the business income tax rate, which will be reduced to 20 percent from the current 25 percent next year.
The amendment stipulates that daily notional income derived from tonnage calculation will be as follows: NT$57 per 100 net tonnes for vessels that weigh less than 1,000 tonnes; NT$42 per 100 net tonnes for vessels that weigh between 1,000 tonnes and 10,000 tonnes; NT$27 per 100 net tonnes for vessels weighing between 10,000 tonnes and 25.000 tonnes; and NT$12 per 100 net tonnes for vessels that weigh more than 25,000 tonnes.
An anonymous official said introducing tonnage tax would help shipping companies, including Evergreen Marine Corp (長榮海運), Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp (陽明海運),Wan Hai Lines Ltd (萬海航運) and U-Ming Marine Transport Corp (裕民航運), save tens of thousands of NT dollars.
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