The Ministry of Justice yesterday said that it would start cracking down next month on those who have accumulated large tax debts.
"Major tax evaders are those individuals who have evaded payment of more than NT$10 million in personal income tax or companies which have evaded payment of over NT$100 million in business tax," said Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan (
"We have to do something to demonstrate the government's authority. I must reiterate, tax dodgers simply cannot be allowed to avoid their tax dues," he said.
The ministry's Administrative Law Enforcement Service will begin sending official warnings to individuals and companies with outstanding tax debts.
According to the agency, the ministry's action will target individuals who have been dodging taxes or fines for a long time, as well as people who evade taxes by fraudulently claiming to have sold property or gone bankrupt.
The agency said that a special task force has been established to carry out this priority mission.
It said that violators who ignored the ministry's warning to pay up would be dealt with promptly.
The special task force officials will be empowered to close and confiscate properties and business operations and apply for court orders to detain offenders or prevent them from traveling abroad.
The agency said that lawyers and accountants who are discovered to have helped tax evaders would also be prosecuted according to the law.
A judge at Taipei District Court's civil courts, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, "Taiwan's criminal justice system rarely jails convicted tax evaders. Its primary concern is to ensure that tax dues are paid, not that offenders are punished.
"Tax evaders know that the worst-case scenario is jail, but even when they've finished a jail term, they still can't be forced to pay," he said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching