The nation’s top decisionmakers yesterday voiced different opinions regarding the ongoing debate over the capital gains tax, with Financial Supervisory Commission Chairman William Tseng (曾銘宗) and central bank Governor Perng Fai-nan (彭淮南) supporting its removal, while Minister of Finance Chang Sheng-ford (張盛和) remains a supporter of amendments proposed by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Regarding the practice that has been widely seen as a drag contributing to the local bourse’s listless average daily turnover, Tseng and Perng said that they are in favor of removing the tax, as investors’ market returns are already included inion tax.
Chang maintained that the KMT proposal is the least controversial option and that it also has a one-month lead in the legislature’s review process.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
According to Chang, implementing the KMT’s amendments would lead to the same near-term outcome as abolishing the capital gains tax outright.
However, Chang said that once rallies at the stock market take hold, controversies would only rise again when voices calling for investors to pay taxes on gains grow strident.
“The KMT’s proposal is the path towards the least controversy as it contains a capital gains tax component,” Chang said.
The KMT version of the capital gains tax reform proposes that the 0.3 percent securities transaction tax be divided into two parts: a 0.25 percent securities transaction tax and a 0.05 percent capital gains tax. In addition, active stock traders could choose, before investing, to pay either the 0.05 percent tax on transactions as capital gains tax, or a 15 percent tax on the stock gains earned thereafter.
Meanwhile, KMT presidential candidate Eric Chu (朱立倫) openly criticized the tax as one of the more controversial policies implemented by President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration, saying that he supports the removing the tax.
Tseng said that he hopes to see the KMT’s amendments complete the approval process as soon as possible to mitigate lingering uncertainties in the market. He also did not rule out abolishing the tax when prompted by lawmakers.
As of the end of last month, average turnover on the TAIEX was gauged at around NT$116 billion (US$3.54 billion), less than the NT$120 billion to NT$130 billion Tseng said he had hoped to see.
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