The Alliance for Fair Tax Reform (公平稅改聯盟) yesterday said the nation’s debt actually amounted to NT$919,000 (US$31,365) per person as of the end of last month, not NT$209,000 per person as cited by the Ministry of Finance (MOF).
The ministry began publishing a Web-based “National Debt Clock” in December as a way of reminding government agencies to monitor their spending.
“The national debt information released by the ministry was incomplete and unclear,” Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), convener of the alliance, told a media briefing.
The ministry’s national debt calculation only includes regular short-term and long-term debt, which totaled NT$4.85 trillion, or NT$209,000 per person, as of the end of last month, the ministry’s data showed.
However, the actual amount of public debt — as defined by the IMF — should include potential national debt and debt from “non-enterprise funds,” the alliance said in a statement.
The non-enterprise funds, also known as non-profit government funds, are used by the government to support infrastructure projects and social welfare programs.
The alliance said potential national debt was about NT$15.71 trillion as of the end of last month, while the debt from non-enterprise funds totaled NT$579.5 billion, data showed.
With these two parts included, the national debt would come to NT$919,000 per person, Wang said.
“The ministry should include the potential national debt, debt from non-enterprise funds and local government debt in future National Debt Clock calculations to provide accurate information to the public,” Wang said.
The National Treasury Agency said the National Debt Clock figures were based on public debt regulations that only count outstanding short-term debt and outstanding debt with a maturity of more than one year.
As for potential national debt, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics is responsible for releasing the information, the agency said in a note yesterday.
Thomas Lee (李桐豪), a finance professor at National Chengchi University, said regardless of which figure should be used, the government should focus more on solving the nation’s actual financial problems.
“Even if the regulations do not include potential national debt and debt from non-enterprise funds, these debts still exist. The ministry should come up with more measures to collect money for the country,” Lee said by telephone.
The government should think about imposing a capital gains tax, as well as a possible levy on income from overseas Taiwanese businesspeople, to improve the government’s financial conditions, Lee said.
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