Taxes on cigarettes underwent a big change following the nation's WTO entry on Jan. 1. In addition to a minimum purchase tax of NT$11.8 imposed on a pack of cigarettes, a health tax of NT$5 was also levied.
Now Long Life cigarettes (長壽菸) retail for NT$35 per pack, including a total tax of NT$18.55. That's a tax rate of 53 percent. Most imported cigarettes retail for NT$50 per pack, with tax amounting to NT$24.3 -- a tax rate of 49 percent. Compared with developed countries, the retail prices and tax rates for cigarettes are apparently too low in Taiwan.
To address the cigarette tax issue, the Department of Health and the National Health Research Institute (國家衛生研究院) recently held an international convention at the Grand Hotel Taipei (圓山飯店). All participating experts urged Taiwan to continue raising cigarette taxes, both to replenish state coffers and to reduce the nation's smoking population as well as its per capita consumption of cigarettes.
Meanwhile, it is reported that some unemployed people have not joined the National Health Insurance (NHI,
Nearly 4 percent of Taiwan's population -- or more than 700,000 people -- either have not joined the NHI program or have stopped paying premiums.
In the interest of social justice, the government and society are obliged to provide unemployed and low-income families with basic health insurance protection, despite their inability to pay insurance fees.
The Department of Health and the Bureau of National Health Insurance
But the total value of the subsidies is not high enough to bridge the current shortfall. Furthermore, delayed payments owed by the patients still need to be made by installments, given the fact that the subsidies are aimed only at meeting urgent needs.
If the unemployed can find jobs, then, of course, they can and should pay back the fees. But today's high unemployment rate suggests that it is not easy for them to find jobs.
The unemployment situation is worsening in rural villages. The situation I have observed in the Hualien countryside was far worse than the government's unemployment figures suggest. It will not be remedied quickly.
I therefore suggest that the government review the current cigarette tax structure and raise the health tax on each pack of cigarettes from NT$5 to NT$10.
The additional NT$5 could be used to subsidize health insurance for underprivileged groups. This would increase the government's tax revenues by approximately NT$10 billion a year but the impact on consumers would be negligible.
Taiwan's cigarette prices would have to rise to between NT$75 and NT$100 per pack to achieve tax rates comparable to those of developed countries. In other words, there is still plenty of room for a tax hike on cigarette.
A moderate increase of NT$5 would greatly boost the nation's tax revenues but have no impact on the nation's cigarette companies or farmers or foreign cigarette firms. Nor would it encourage further smuggling.
The increased tax revenues would help provide medical care to financially underprivileged people. The measure would also facilitate the prevention of health problems caused by tobacco.
It is to be hoped that the media, elected officials and the public will face up to this problem and show their support for this proposal.
Yeh Ching-chuan is CEO of the John Tung Foundation.
Translated by Jackie Lin
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs