Council of Agriculture Minister Lee Chin-lung (
Lee said that the council will be happy to see the proposed tax cut implemented, saying it will not only lower the burden of taxation on farmers and fishermen, but also encourage consumers to purchase domestically-produced farm goods.
Premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) announced the policy after he ordered the formation of a special task force June 5 to flesh out tax reform measures in line with President Shui-bian's (陳水扁) directives for taxation reform last week.
Hsieh also said that some of the items in the three major categories will not be subject to business taxation in order to help disadvantaged people.
Lee noted that the tax cut will help farmers and fishermen, whose earnings are normally less than those employed in other sectors.
Meanwhile, David Huang (
Huang added that all details concerning the tax reform plan should be put on the table to allow relevant parties to discuss them and give their input. A national consensus on the tax reform proposals is definitely needed before the government implements them, he said.
At the Democratic Progressive Party's caucus office at the Legislative Yuan, a party whip, Chen Chin-jun (陳景峻), urged the public to "have a healthier attitude" toward the government's tax reform proposals, which include raising the national tax rate to 15 percent from the current 13.6 percent, as well as hiking business tax rates and those of some other categories.
Many critics misinterpreted the proposal as an across-the-board tax hike.
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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