Those who illegally manufacture, import, sell or transport wine will face heavier punishments if draft amendments to the Wine and Tobacco Management Act (
The Executive Yuan is scheduled to approve the draft at the weekly closed-door Cabinet affairs meeting today.
In a bid to battle the problem of bootleg rice wines that are thought to have killed several people, the Cabinet has planned to take steps, including revising the law.
According to the draft revision, those who manufacture or import bootleg wine will face a sentence of up to three years and a fine of between NT$600,000 and NT$3 million.
At present, the maximum sentence is one year with a fine of between NT$300,000 and NT$1.5 million.
For those who deliberately sell, transfer or display bootleg wines, the sentence will increase from one year to two years and the maximum fine from NT$750,000 to NT$1.5 million.
Bootleg manufacturers could also face murder charges in connection with the deaths of people poisoned by contaminated rice wine.
The government has also taken the initiative to revise the Wine and Tobacco Tax Act (菸酒稅法) aimed at replacing the NT$150 tax per liter with a levy of 120 percent of the price of every 0.6 liter bottle.
The proposed cut is expected to bring the price down NT$130 to between NT$50 and NT$60.
The Cabinet, however, would like to wait until Taiwan reaches a consensus with the US and the EU over the proposal of tax reduction to approve the tax revision.
"We'd like to negotiate with other WTO members for their permission to change the taxation on rice wine under the WTO framework," Cabinet spokesperson Chuang Suo-hang (
As a condition for its WTO membership, Taiwan agreed to tax rice wine on the basis of quantity -- NT$150 per liter in the first year of accession and NT$180 per liter from the second year.
The US turned down Taiwan's proposal to lower its tax on rice wine during the first round of bilateral consultations last Thursday.
Premier Yu Shyi-kun ordered early consultations with the US and the EU on a rice-wine tax cut under the WTO framework, to be coupled with a revision of the Wine and Tobacco Tax Act, in the wake of a rice-wine bootlegging crisis that has resulted in more than 11 deaths and other injuries nationwide over the past few weeks.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods