Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday unveiled his economic policies, proposing a tax relief plan that would include tax refunds for low-income families if he is elected president next month.
Ma promised to include a budget of NT$25 billion (US$700 million) each year for tax refunds to families whose annual income was under NT$480,000.
Families with annual incomes of NT$360,000 or less do not pay tax. Such families would also receive a subsidy that equaled 13 percent of their annual income, or up to NT$46,800, per year under his proposal, Ma said.
Ma said about 900,000 low income families, or 3.2 million people, would benefit from his policy.
Ma said that he would increase the individual taxable income limit from NT$78,000 to NT$100,000, raise taxable educational expenses to NT$25,000 and increase deductible inheritance tax from NT$13 million per household to NT$26 million.
"I will not answer any questions other than on my economic policies. I have stressed the importance for Taiwan that we revive the economy and I believe this is what people want from a presidential candidate," Ma said yesterday during a press conference in Taipei, refusing to comment on his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) counterpart Frank Hsieh's (
Insisting on discussing nothing but his tax relief platform, Ma further proposed to decrease the business tax rate from 25 percent to 20 percent, while canceling tax incentives for high-tech industry.
Canceling the tax incentives for the industry, Ma said, would help to increase tax income for the nation and eliminate the unfair taxation systems for different industries.
Ma said high-tech industries only contributed 5.8 percent of the nation's tax income, while traditional businesses were responsible for 14.8 percent.
Rather than encourage high-tech industries, Ma said he planned to give tax incentives to businesses that showed innovation.
Ma also pledged to promote a "green" tax plan, by levying an energy tax to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, cut energy use and aid the environment.
The income from the green tax would be used to subsidize companies for implementing energy saving measures and for public transportation schemes.
The tax policies would cut NT$35 billion from annual tax income, but other economic plans would contribute to the nation's economic growth and therefore increase taxable income, balancing the loss in revenues that the changes would bring, Ma 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
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