The Pan-Purple Alliance yesterday vowed to mobilize taxpayers to defy tax laws if the government fails to adjust what they called a taxation system that serves the interests of large corporations.
"People have the right to refuse an unfair taxation system if the government continues to allow big companies to pay less taxes than the general public," said Chien Hsi-chieh, convener of the Pan-Purple Alliance and a former Democratic Progressive Party legislator. "We do not rule out the possibility of launching a campaign to encourage the public to adopt a non-violent, uncooperative measure to refuse paying taxes next year."
If this should happen, Chien said the government would be doomed and President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) would be forced to step down before his term expires in 2008.
According to Chien, the government's taxation system has many loopholes. He singled out the proposed minimum tax scheme, which has been approved by the Executive Yuan and is awaiting the legislature's review and final approval.
The minimum tax scheme does not tax high-income individuals on their overseas income, which Chien said would encourage the wealthy to transfer their money overseas.
The scheme also does not apply to foreign investment in local stock markets, which Chien said would encourage local buyers to establish paper companies abroad to dodge the taxes.
In addition, the proposed progressive tax rates for the minimum corporate tax scheme -- 7.5 percent, 8.5 percent and 10 percent -- cater to the needs of conglomerates, making them the biggest winners, Chien said.
"What kind of tax reform is this?" Chien asked. "It only shows that the scheme is a hoax and that worse-off taxpayers like you and me are being exploited by the reform scheme, which is manipulated by big corporations and tolerated by the government."
Echoing Chien's opinions, Jason Huang (
Earnings from stock transactions should also be levied to make the taxation system fairer, Huang said.
Gee Keh-shang (葛克昌), a law professor at National Taiwan University, said that there are three kinds of taxpayers in Taiwan: those who do not enjoy any taxation privileges, those who enjoy a certain degree of taxation privileges, and those entitled to total taxation exemptions.
"We are not asking for the taxation system to be perfect, but the government should not create a new category giving big companies more taxation privileges," Gee said.
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