Business leaders yesterday urged the government to cut taxes and step up investment incentives to help Taiwan cope with an economic slowdown this year.
Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce (工商協進會) chairman Lin Por-fong (林伯豐) made the plea during the group’s monthly meeting.
“What the government can do to help the nation out of an economic slowdown is do away with inappropriate taxes,” Lin said, citing the commodity tax and the stamp tax, as well as uneven tax burdens for domestic and foreign stock investors.
It is not reasonable for the government to set different capital gains tax rates for local and foreign investors, Lin said.
Local investors have to pay 28 percent on capital gains from cash and stock dividends, while their foreign peers need only pay 21 percent, the association said, adding the practice would sideline local investors.
It is also urging the government to spare retained corporate earnings from the 5 percent business tax, so that companies have greater financial muscle to meet expansion needs, Lin said.
The group said was still concerned about a potential electricity shortage, adding that Taiwan and Germany are the only two nations in the world that have declared a plan to abolish nuclear power.
“The price of producing offshore wind power is too high and the authorities should make it known how they decide feed-in tariffs,” Lin said.
The government should ensure a stable electricity supply at reasonable costs, so that companies in different sectors can thrive, he said.
The government should also consider raising the quota of migrant workers, and differentiate between domestic and foreign laborers when it comes to the minimum wage, the group said.
Taiwan should seek actively to join regional trade blocs and ink free-trade agreements with major partners so that Taiwanese goods can remain competitive internationally, the association said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to