The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday said that a proposed bill to reduce tax on day-trading transactions would boost average daily turnover on the local bourse by NT$25 billion (US$805.93 million).
The estimate was given by FSC Chairman Lee Ruey-tsang (李瑞倉) at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee.
Halving the tax from 0.003 percent to 0.0015 percent would increase daily turnover at the Taiwan Stock Exchange by about NT$16 billion, while daily transactions at the Taipei Exchange would see gains of about NT$9 billion per day, Lee said.
The bill has been approved by the Executive Yuan and is expected to be reviewed by the legislature in the next few weeks.
If approved, the change would apply for one year, while further extensions would be dependent on its effectiveness, Lee said.
For the main bourse, the planned cut is expected to boost day-trading volumes from 10 percent of total turnover to 15 percent, while transactions at the over-the-counter bourse would see day trading rise from 15 percent to 22 percent, Securities and Futures Bureau Deputy Director-General Wang Yung-hsin (王詠心) said.
In other news, the nation’s tax revenue totaled NT$68 billion last month, growing 8.3 percent from a year earlier, aided by a large increases in securities transactions and property taxes, the Ministry of Finance said.
Securities transaction tax revenue rose 57.3 percent annually to NT$6.3 billion as daily market turnover inflated 23.34 percent to NT$127.7 billion in the same period, the ministry said.
Property tax revenue stood at NT$5.8 billion, a jump of 57.9 percent from a year earlier, the ministry said.
For the first two months of the year, the state coffers collected NT$200.4 billion in overall tax revenue, a pickup of 2.3 percent from the same period last year, accounting for 9.3 percent of the budget target, the ministry said.
Additional reporting by Crystal Hsu
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