President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday played down concerns about the effect of the proposed luxury tax on the general public, saying it was aimed at cracking down on speculation and making housing prices more reasonable.
Ma defended the draft luxury tax bill yesterday morning while presiding over the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) weekly Central Standing Committee meeting as party chairman.
“Speculation has a bad influence on a healthy housing market, and our goal is to help housing prices return to a relatively normal level via the luxury tax. The tax will target speculators, and we will make sure that the policy doesn’t hurt the public,” said Ma, who made the comments hours before the draft passed an initial review by the legislature’s Finance Committee.
The proposal still needs to pass a second and third reading in the legislature. It could be put on the legislative review agenda as early as April 22.
At a separate setting yesterday, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential hopeful Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said that DPP lawmakers would not block the bill’s passage in the legislature.
“The DPP caucus has made it clear that it will let the luxury tax pass. However, we do expect that [luxury tax] revenue will be used entirely on [social welfare] policies,” Tsai said.
Speaking on the bill’s impact on the housing market, Tsai said she believed there would only be a short-term effect and called on the government to implement more long-term measures to stabilize housing prices.
The Ma administration should look into the real-estate market’s fundamental problems and work out measures on stabilizing prices that go beyond the temporary effect of the luxury tax, she said.
“Long-term planning will allow all these people who cannot afford to buy a house to buy one. That should be the [administration’s] long-term goal,” she said.
Additional reporting by CNA
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