President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday approved the Executive Yuan’s preliminary proposal for the free economic pilot zones and expressed hope that the plan could be finalized by the end of this month.
Ma also instructed the Executive Yuan to establish a promotion task force to communicate with lawmakers, the media and concerned industries, and submit the draft of the special regulations for free economic pilot zones (自由經濟示範區特別條例) to the legislature for review this month.
Ma made the instructions after he was briefed by Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) Minister Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔) on the proposal at a meeting at the Presidential Office, which was also attended by Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺), Vice Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) and members of the Cabinet.
Based on the council’s plan, Taiwanese companies will be exempt from taxes on net profits and dividend income generated from their oversea operations if these companies are willing to invest the money in the free economic pilot zones.
Overseas companies, which operate warehouses or process goods in the zones, will enjoy a business tax exemption on 10 percent of the imported goods and on all exported goods for three years, the council said.
The president agreed to halve the income tax for employees from overseas working for companies operating in the free economic pilot zones during the first three-year period. Those employees would be exempted from tax upon dividend income.
“In the revised plan, we tried to shift the focus of the free economic pilot zones to easing regulations, rather than tax reduction,” Kuan said.
The council estimated that the revised pilot zone plan would help boost private investment by NT$21 billion (US$709 million) and GDP by NT$30 billion next year, as well as creating 13,000 jobs. Local banks and securities firms are expected to grow their revenue by NT$30 billion and NT$40 billion respectively, in the five years after the plan takes effect, it said.
The Ministry of Finance (MOF) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Tseng Chu-wei (曾巨威) are leery of those tax breaks, given the erosion of the government’s tax revenue income and difficulty of ending such incentives.
Foreign companies operating in the zones that introduce new technologies to the nation or set up global operation headquarters in the zones would not enjoy those tax incentives, as had been planned in the previous plan.
“Certain tax reductions may not provide a long-term boost to the economy and can be canceled, but we still have to reduce certain taxes to the same level as our trade peers to attract investment,” Kuan said last month.
The council made the announcement yesterday after the Cabinet submitted the revised plan of the free economic pilot zones to the president and KMT legislators.
The government will also allow professionals, including lawyers, accountants and architects from foreign countries, excluding China, to invest in local companies or set up local branches with local partners in the zones, the council said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS