The Cabinet yesterday approved an amendment to the Tax Collection Act (稅捐稽徵法) extending the period the tax authorities can pursue the collection of unpaid taxes by five years, to March 5, 2017.
Under the current act, amended on March 5, 2007, tax authorities cannot pursue such arrears when the current five-year period expires on March 5, 2012.
The new amendment was made in accordance with public expectations and the principles of justice and fairness, Executive Yuan spokesman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) told a press conference, quoting remarks made by Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) at the Cabinet meeting.
According to the Ministry of Finance, as of May 7 there were 115,115 outstanding cases of unpaid taxes, accounting for tax arrears of NT$175.26 billion (US$5.5 billion).
Chiang said the current regulation, considered by some to be an “amnesty clause” under which wealthy tax defaulters will be exempt from paying overdue taxes as of March 5, 2012, was not fair to legitimate taxpayers.
Meanwhile, the Cabinet also approved an amendment to the Final Sites for the Disposal of Low-Level Radioactive Waste Act (低放射性廢棄物最終處置設施場址設置條例).
Under the current act, Taipei City and Kaohsiung City, the nation’s two special municipalities, cannot be selected as sites for disposal facilities.
The Atomic Energy Council said that special municipalities should be included in the site selection list once Taipei County is upgraded and Taichung City and Taichung County, Tainan City and Tainan County and Kaohsiung City and Kaohsiung County are merged to become special municipalities on Dec. 25.
If the proposed amendment is approved by the legislature, low-density areas located in special municipalities could be selected as sites for the disposal of nuclear waste.
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