The nation’s tax revenue rose 24.4 percent year-on-year to NT$379 billion (US$12.71 billion) last month on the back of pickups in corporate income, as well as business and property taxes partly caused by a low base effect, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
Corporate income tax soared 65.9 percent to NT$53.9 billion last month due to a low comparison base, as more companies filed income tax returns this year compared with last year, when the lunar Dragon Boat Festival extended the deadline to early June and lowered the comparison base, Department of Statistics Deputy Director-General Chen Yu-feng (陳玉豐) said.
Likewise, personal income tax recorded a 12.8 percent annual increase to NT$40.3 billion last month partly because the holiday last year delayed people’s filings, Chen said.
BUSINESS
Business taxes gained 11.3 percent to NT$74.5 billion on the back of a pickup in consumption activity, the ministry said.
Commodity taxes picked up 11.6 percent from a year earlier to NT$15 billion, with car imports accounting for more than 30 percent as demand for imported models remained strong, it said.
Meanwhile, securities transaction taxes swelled 59.3 percent to NT$9.9 billion last month, the highest level since September 2011, as daily turnover increased to NT$173.6 billion, from NT$109.8 billion in the same period last year, it said.
CAPITAL
However, land value increase tax income dropped 3.9 percent to NT$8.4 billion last month, even though the number of taxable cases grew 3.7 percent from a year earlier to 56,167, the ministry said.
Gift taxes plunged 78.2 percent to NT$600 million last month as people adopted better asset allocation strategies, it said.
In the first five months of the year, the ministry collected NT$854.7 billion in tax revenue, a 13.2 percent increase from the same period last year, it 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],”
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