Pegatron Corp (和碩) chairman Tung Tzu-hsien (童子賢) urged the government to review and amend income tax regulations to prevent the flight of domestic talent.
“Taiwan’s industrial development depends on talent. However, there has been a tendency of talented Taiwanese to move to the other side of the Taiwan Strait and to other countries over the past few years,” Tung told the opening ceremony of the IT Month in Taipei on Saturday, which was attended by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
Tung said that besides the obvious difference in salaries between domestic and international companies, Taiwan’s heavy income tax rates also acted as a factor pushing talent away.
“Taiwan is in a troubling situation, in which competent people are leaving the nation,” Tung said.
He said it is unfortunate to see the government continue to keep raising tax rates for high-ranking executives, who are invaluable to the companies they work for and to the society in general.
The Ministry of Finance last year raised the individual progressive income tax from 40 percent to 45 percent, with the effective tax reaching 49 percent, while tax rates for capital gains from stock investments or property transactions remain at 0.3 percent at most.
As a result, numerous corporate executives working at locally listed companies have transferred their nationalities to countries that levy a progressive income tax rate as low as 17 percent, Tung said.
“Tax regulations should provide an incentive for people to work hard and should not be used to indulge people who rely on capital gains. This is bad for society,” he said.
Separately, when asked by reporters about his opinion on lifting a government ban on Chinese investments in Taiwan’s IC design industry, Tung said that if there are companies that are worried about losing their advantage to Chinese competition after the ban is eased, “Taiwan might as well close all the doors for all investments.”
“Enterprises cannot rely on the government to protect them from competition, they have to work in this difficult environment and become stronger,” he said.
He said he had a discussion last week with MediaTek Inc (聯發科) chairman Tsai Ming-kai (蔡明介), Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) chairman Yancey Hai (海英俊), Minister of Economics Affairs John Deng (鄧振中) and Minister of Labor Chen Hsiung-wen (陳雄文) regarding the issues of Chinese investments and flight of talent.
Quoting Tsai’s remarks during the discussion, Tung said that the “red supply chain” should not be an issue as long as companies abide by regulations.
“Taiwan cannot keep closing the doors if we want to maintain our competitiveness in the global market,” 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