More than 70 percent of the public think that the government’s tax reforms in recent years have mainly benefited the rich and large corporations, with nearly 60 percent saying the government was uninterested in the well-being of the general populace, a Common Wealth magazine survey showed.
The survey, which polled 1,084 adults aged over 20 by telephone from April 14 to Saturday, indicated that the problem with the nation’s taxation system was not the tax rate itself, but rather a general sense of unfairness caused by too many tax breaks for businesses and a lack of securities and property transaction taxes.
“Forty-three percent of respondents said that the recent government-proposed bill to lower the business income tax rate from 25 percent to 17 percent was unfair,” the survey said, adding that the bill marked the largest tax reduction measure in the nation’s history.
Worse yet, “the bill was passed at a time when the nation was experiencing the worst financial conditions in eight years,” it said, citing data from the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics showing that the nation’s fiscal deficit climbed to a new high of NT$500 billion (US$15.9 billion) last year.
“While 79 percent of respondents agreed that people with income should pay taxes, 54 percent said that the nation’s tax system was unfair, with less than 25 percent thinking otherwise,” the Chinese-language magazine said.
More than 40 percent of those who opposed the current tax system said that salaried workers have almost no way of avoiding taxes, resulting in a situation where the rich pay disproportionately less in taxes relative to their income, it said.
Citing data released by the Ministry of Finance a few years ago, the magazine said that eight of the wealthiest men in Taiwan didn’t have to pay any taxes and that 17 of them paid taxes at an average of just 1 percent.
“All this indicates that ordinary workers are taxed heavily while enterprises and rich people pay less tax,” the magazine concluded.
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