The Cabinet announced its proposal for a minimum tax yesterday, marking the next step toward changing the income tax system.
The announcement was made at a press conference after the weekly Cabinet meeting yesterday morning. According to the "Alternative Minimum Taxation" (
In addition to regular taxes, corporations will be required to pay a 10 percent tax on income in excess of NT$2 million. Individuals will be required to be pay 20 percent tax on income in excess of NT$8 million.
According to Minister of Finance Lin Chuan (
"The whole idea of this new mechanism is to find fair tax rules for our country," Lin said.
Lin also said that officials had debated whether to tax overseas income ahead of yesterday's announcement. But they decided not to do so at this time.
"This does not mean that this part will never be reviewed or added into the entire taxation system," Lin said.
He acknowledged the plan may face criticism.
"A new rule to increase taxes will always be condemned. No doubt," he said.
According to Lin, the government last changed the taxation system in 1986. That change was not opposed because total taxes were kept the same, with officials taking out some parts of the old rules and replacing them with new ones.
"However, I would like to remind everybody again: The new taxes are to make the entire system fairer and most of us will not be impacted by them," Lin said.
The draft bill will be referred to the Legislative Yuan for deliberation in the upcoming session.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆) and Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) Legislator David Huang (黃適卓) earlier this week voiced support for the minimum tax proposal. Lai said he hoped the Cabinet would "persist to the end" in the face of possible pressure from the private sector.
Huang suggested that once the new rule has been implemented, the government's increased revenue should go toward balancing the budget and financing more social welfare programs.
also see stories:
New taxes hardly noticeable: minister
New system will choke investment, business groups say
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
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