Approximately 300,000 households will have to pay higher taxes under a Ministry of Finance plan to introduce a progressive housing tax on residential units, Deputy Minister of Finance Chang Sheng-ford (張盛和) said yesterday.
Chang made the remarks after a ministry meeting with the heads of local tax offices to discuss proposed amendments to the House Tax Act (房屋稅條例), including raising housing and land value taxes, to achieve an equitable taxation system and curb property speculation.
The ministry is planning to change the current flat housing tax rate for residential units of 1.2 percent to a range of 1.2 percent and 1.8 percent, depending on the valuation of the properties by local governments.
“Under the new rate, 96.56 percent of households will still pay the same housing tax rate, while 3.4 percent — or about 300,000 households — will be taxed at a higher rate,” Chang said.
Houses with a valuation of between NT$100,000 (US$3,100) and NT$1 million will be taxed at a rate of 1.2 percent, followed by 1.3 percent for houses worth between NT$1 million and NT$4 million, 1.5 percent for houses worth between NT$4 million and NT$8 million and 1.8 percent for houses worth more than NT$8 million, Chang said.
Under the plan, the minimum tax rate for commercial properties will also be raised to 3.5 percent, from 3 percent, while the minimum tax rate on properties neither designated for residential or business use, such as private hospitals, will be raised to 2 percent, from 1.5 percent, the ministry said.
“The upward adjustment will have little impact on the public, as most local tax offices have already adopted a 2 percent rate,” Chang said.
The land value tax rate, meanwhile, will be raised by between 0.2 percentage points and 1 percentage point to a range of 17 percent and 65 percent, which is expected to affect 190,000 households, he said.
At a separate setting, Citibank Taiwan Ltd chairman Morris Li (利明献) told the Taipei Times that the government’s various measures to curb property speculation would not have much impact on the real estate market.
Li said that with the economy recovering and abundant liquidity in the market, property prices were still expected to climb in a long term, adding that the government was unlikely to use a blanket policy to tighten credit as unemployment remained high.
“To mop up excess liquidity, the government should instead inject more funds into value-added infrastructure while working to boost economic development,” 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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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