Opposition lawmakers yesterday called on the Legislative Yuan to postpone reviewing a controversial bill on taxing capital gains on stock investments, saying it is inappropriate to impose such a tax at this time. However, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which proposed the tax bill, said the party will try hard to push for approval of the bill in the legislature.
The Legislative Yuan has scheduled a special session from Wednesday to Friday to discuss several proposals, including a plan to lift a ban on the leanness-enhancing drug ractopamine in beef and the proposed capital gains tax.
Lawmakers are expected to review the capital gains tax bill on Wednesday.
According to the “dual-track, two-stage” proposal supported by the KMT caucus, next year and in 2014, investors will pay a transaction tax of between 0.02 and 0.06 percent on stock trades only when the TAIEX hits 8,500 points or higher.
Investors who sell more than 10,000 shares from initial public offerings or over 100,000 shares in emerging stocks or unlisted companies will have to pay a 15 percent tax on capital gains, but they will get a 50 percent tax discount if they hold on to their shares for more than a year.
Starting from 2015, all investors will have to pay a 15 percent tax on their capital gains, while investors who sell shares worth NT$1 billion (US$33.3 million) in one year will face a 15 percent tax.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) said the KMT’s proposal fails to address fairness and justice in taxation and is also unlikely to accord with the “ability to pay” principle.
Ker said disputes over the capital gains tax have prompted many investors to stay on the sidelines in recent trade, which has seriously affected the performance of the local bourse.
People First Party caucus whip Thomas Lee (李桐豪) said the local economy is slowing down amid weakening global demand, so now is not the right time to impose the tax, which is likely to further impact economic fundamentals.
Lee said if the capital gains tax is levied as planned, the government should abolish the current stock transaction tax.
However, Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池), director of the KMT’s Policy Committee, said KMT lawmakers would support the proposal, as the tax plan was ironed out after careful consideration in a bid to abide by the taxation fairness principle and it is expected to have a minimal impact on the local bourse.
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