The Yilan County Government has fired the first shot by imposing land taxes of up to five times the norm on underutilized lots in the county’s industrial parks to support the Cabinet’s effort to ease the land shortage for industrial properties.
Acting Yilan County Commissioner Derek Chen (陳金德) on Thursday said he is taking an inventory of underutilized plots of land under his jurisdiction and will levy additional land taxes on vacant plots at rates two to five times the regular rates to promote land development.
Chen’s move came after the Cabinet made plans on Nov. 6 to free up to 1,422 hectares of underutilized land for industrial use in the next four years as part of an effort to encourage investment in Taiwan.
Business trade groups have said that shortages of land, water, electricity, unskilled workers and talented labor have hindered private investment and GDP growth as a whole.
There are many idle or underused plots of land in Yilan, Chen said, adding that he is first going to target Lize Industrial Park (利澤工業區) and Longte Industrial Park (龍德工業區).
Only 45.15 percent of Lize Industrial Park’s 329.05 hectares have been put to use since a redevelopment bid in 1996, whereas the 235 hectares of Longte Industrial Park have had a utilization rate of 97.4 percent since 1980, government data showed.
The Yilan County Government in 2015 granted the two parks a three-year grace period and asked owners to speed up development and construction or face stiff fines. The grace period is due to expire in March next year.
The two parks are now subjected to vacant land levies equivalent to five times their regular land tax rates until the owners make amends, Chen said, adding that Yilan is the first and only local government to take action to advance the Cabinet’s policy.
China Wire & Cable Co Ltd (中華電信電纜) owns most of the underused plots of land in the area after purchasing 19.24 hectares of land in 1997, but has resold most of it in recent years, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported yesterday.
The company has urged policymakers to put off levying vacant land taxes, saying that it has yet to develop the plots of land because big trucks are not allowed to go through the Hsuehshan Tunnel (雪山隧道), a predicament which has steeply increased estimates for loading and transportation costs.
China Wire & Cable said it is seeking a solution, but needs extra time, the newspaper reported.
The Executive Yuan last month threatened to auction off idle plots of land to demonstrate that it is serious about making Taiwan more business-friendly, and earlier this month the Legislative Yuan passed amendments to the Act for Industrial Innovation (產業創新條例), setting fines levied against owners of disused industrial park land at 10 percent of the assessed value.
However, the government said it would not target state-run Taiwan Sugar Corp (台糖), which owns up to 50,000 hectares, about half of which is designated as farmland.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group