For example, the professor noted, Chen and the DPP promised to promote social justice through tax reform. "But one year later, what we have seen is that the DPP has compromised and has implemented many policies that contradict its campaign promise," Tseng said.
Tseng noted that the DPP had proposed removing the tax exemption for junior high school and primary school teachers -- but the plan has now been axed.
"Tax reform is a must for the administration to improve the government's debt situation," Tseng argued. "Many proposals on tax reform have been dropped. On this score, the DPP administration has performed even worse than the KMT."
And something needs to be done about the nation's debt soon, the academic said. He noted that the DPP inherited roughly NT$2 trillion in debt after it took over from the KMT. In the past year under the DPP, roughly NT$350 billion has been added to that amount -- of which NT$100 billion is new debt and NT$250 billion is interest on outstanding debt.
"But the finance minister doesn't seem to realize the seriousness of the issue," Tseng said.
Although Yen has proposed selling government-owned assets to cover the nation's budget deficit, this plan is not so simple to execute he said. "In order to sell national property such as land, it takes a long time to conduct the process, and you need to find buyers," Tseng said.
Tseng said the only ways to reduce the budget deficit are either to cut expenses by laying off civil servants or raise taxes -- both of which the DPP is also unwilling to do.
The academic also said the DPP's tax policies favored businesses over workers, citing in particular the reduction in the business tax on banks.
Under the KMT, the tax was reduced from 5 percent to 2 percent so banks could use the spare cash to write down bad loans. At the time, the DPP protested the move.
Now, under the DPP government, the business tax for banks has been reduced further, from 2 percent to nothing.
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