The Ministry of Finance should lay down guidelines to settle disputes over sales entities if it plans to impose business taxes on cross-border e-commerce activities, accounting firm Deloitte & Touche said yesterday.
The suggestion came as the ministry is drawing up a draft bill that would require cross-border e-commerce operators to register in Taiwan if their annual revenue reaches a taxable threshold.
Taxation authorities should provide details on which entities should bear the tax burden to avoid potential disputes between foreign commodity and labor providers, and online platforms, Deloittee Taiwan tax partner Susan Lee (李惠先) said.
Foreign e-commerce operators might argue that they only earn commission from selling goods or services on behalf of other firms, Lee said, adding that the firms could demand that the tax base be limited to commission values, not selling prices.
Tax officials have indicated they would respect contract terms between goods and service providers and online platforms.
Foreign hotel-booking agencies and game distribution platforms in particular have seen fast-growing sales in Taiwan, Lee said, adding that the UK has drawn up guidelines to settle potential disputes.
“Detailed guidelines are beneficial to tax revenue in Taiwan and would help companies that plan to enter the local market,” Lee said.
According to current rules, domestic operators must submit tax statements if their monthly commodity sales exceed NT$80,000 and their service charges surpass NT$40,000.
Foreign e-commerce operators have long been criticized for failing to pay taxes in Taiwan, even though they have earned significant revenue through digital platforms overseas.
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts