Taiwan may face a tough job persuading WTO members to agree to a cut in the rice wine tax even after the legislature approved an amendment to the Tobacco and Liquor Tax Act (菸酒稅法) in an extraordinary session yesterday.
The passage of the amendment provides the legal basis for the government to halve the price of rice wine from NT$50 a bottle to NT$25. In submitting the proposal, the Cabinet said that rice wine is a cultural staple in cooking and should not be levied the same tax as high-proof alcoholic beverages.
However, WTO members have expressed concern that lowering the rice wine tax would put imported alcoholic beverages at a disadvantage.
Deputy Minister of Finance Chang Sheng-ford (張盛和) said that reducing the rice wine tax and prices would not undermine the nation’s commitment to the global trade body and the interests of foreign brewers.
Chang said the Ministry of Economic Affairs would continue to communicate with the WTO on the issue.
After Taiwan joined the WTO in 2002, the tax on rice wine was raised to the same level as imported distilled spirits at NT$185 per liter, causing the price of rice wine to jump to NT$180 per bottle from about NT$20
The legislature passed an amendment to the Tobacco and Liquor Tax Act in May last year to lower the tax rate on distilled spirits in a bid to prevent hoarding of rice wine and get rid of fake wine in the market. That caused the retail price of rice wine to drop to NT$50 per bottle, but several legislators said the price was still too high and urged the Ministry of Finance to launch a WTO campaign to lower prices to NT$25 a bottle.
Although the ministry warned that cutting the rice wine tax could cause trade disputes with WTO members, the Cabinet put aside the ministry’s concern and approved the draft amendment last month.
Since then, the wine tax has become a political issue that has cropped up time and again during elections, as candidates look for issues to stir public sentiment.
Chang said Taiwan did not push for a lower levy on rice wine during WTO accession talks, but the situation has changed.
The government is planning to propose a tax on beverages used in cooking, he said, adding that imported rice wine would also benefit from this lower tax rate.
This would show that Taiwan is not acting in favor of Taiwanese companies only, but is offering equal treatment to all WTO members, Chang said.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now
RSS