Shoppers may no longer need to collect paper receipts by the end of this year. The Ministry of Finance (MOF) said yesterday that it planned to launch an “e-receipt” program as early as December, with expected savings of NT$7.4 billion (US$236 million) over the next four years.
After the system is introduced, information about payments using IC chip devices — such as transportation smart cards — will be automatically transmitted to the ministry’s Financial Data Center, local media quoted Deputy Finance Minister Tseng Ming-chung (曾銘宗) as saying.
“People will no longer need to collect paper receipts and every two months a government system will help customers check for winning numbers in the receipt lottery,” Tseng said, adding that the government will notify winners via text message or e-mail.
The receipt lottery is aimed at stemming tax evasion by firms or stores by encouraging consumers to obtain receipts for every purchase from businesses with monthly turnovers of NT$200,000 or more.
According to the ministry, about 11.5 billion paper receipts are printed every year.
TRIAL RUN
Tseng said the ministry is planning a one-year trial run from December and that a proposal for the project has been submitted to the Executive Yuan for approval.
Over the past five years, almost 27,000 companies have used “e-invoices” for business-to-business transactions, saving handling costs of NT$2.8 billion, the Council for Economic Planning and Development said.
For the first time since the receipt lottery began in 1951, the ministry held a direct public presentation of the draw in Taipei yesterday.
CONVENIENCE
Minister of Finance Lee Sush-der (李述德) said earlier this year that the government hoped e-receipts would solve any inconvenience for the public in collecting receipts and checking the numbers for lottery prizes.
The receipt lottery system is managed by the ministry and cash prizes are offered on the 25th of every odd-numbered month.
Each draw includes eight numbers, with a grand prize of NT$2 million and the lowest prize of NT$200 awarded to those holding receipts that contain the final three winning numbers.
The ministry said it issued NT$4.66 billion in cash prizes for the receipt lottery last year. The budget for this year is expected to be NT$4.8 billion.
About NT$200 million in prizes went unclaimed over the past two years, according to the ministry.
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