Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said yesterday that there were “practical difficulties” to overcome before the country would be able to introduce absentee voting, suggesting that the government would not pursue the plan unless it has wide public support.
He was responding to an appeal at the Executive Yuan from a group of young Taiwanese businesspeople based overseas.
“Absentee voting has been used in many advanced democracies for many years, but you can imagine Taiwanese businesspeople voting in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen ... Don’t you think there will be questions over whether anything might affect their vote?” Wu said.
Wu said “there is no chance in sight” that Taiwanese living abroad would soon be able to vote by absentee ballot.
Wu’s remarks contradicted recent comments made by Central Election Commission Chairman Rai Hau-min (賴浩敏), who told a legislative question-and-answer session in November that the commission would work toward instituting an absentee voting system and it was close to the implementation stage.
Head of the business group, Lin Ying-chun (林映君), told Wu that overseas Taiwanese expected the Executive Yuan and the legislature to push through legislation to allow absentee voting.
“Whenever there is a significant election, we always fly home against the clock, but seats and our time are always limited,” Lin said.
The group also called on the government to repeal a tax policy implemented this year that residents of Taiwan whose annual income from overseas exceeds NT$1 million (US$31,000) and annual domestic income exceeds NT$6 million have to pay a 20 percent tax on earnings from overseas.
“I heard from many other people that they are thinking of canceling their household registration to save the trouble of filing a tax return. If this happens, the country will suffer more tax revenue losses,” Lin said.
The Overseas Compatriot Affairs Commission (OCAC) has been trying to persuade the Ministry of Finance (MOF) to revise the new tax policy by exempting people who are domiciled in the country but live here less than 183 days a year.
Wu said the OCAC had cited the regulation that governs army enlistment of draftees with dual citizenship as an example and wished to apply it to the tax policy, but the ministry had other concerns.
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