The Ministery of Finance is to limit the maximum number of residential properties for personal use applicable to a lower house-tax rate to three per homeowner, Minister of Finance Chang Sheng-ford (張盛和) said yesterday.
To be eligible for the lower tax rate, self-use residential properties should be truly occupied by the owners or their direct relatives, such as parents or children, and not be rented out or operated as business offices or studios, Chang added.
Last month, the legislature’s Finance Committee passed its preliminary review of a proposal to increase the tax rate for non-owner-occupied residential properties to between 1.5 percent and 3.6 percent, from the current tax range of between 1.2 percent and 2 percent.
The tax range for owner-occupied, or personal use, homes is to remain unchanged at 1.2 to 2 percent, under the proposal.
The ministry had planned to draft the definition of the standards for residential properties for personal use last month.
Chang named several standards during a question-and-answer session in the committee yesterday, in a bid to clarify various concerns raised by lawmakers.
Based on government data, the number of homeowners which own three or more properties totaled 717,000 at the end of last year, translating into less than 10 percent of the nation’s 7.56 million households.
Only 300,000 homeowners held four or more properties as of the end of last year, Chang said, citing government statistics.
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