Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) said yesterday that the Cabinet has no intention at the moment to plan or study a special tax to support the military’s transition to an all-volunteer force.
The Ministry of Finance had raised the concept during discussions on the nation’s long-term finances a few months ago, but no plans have been developed and no new tax systems are being considered, Jiang said in response to a lawmaker’s question about the proposed tax at a legislative hearing.
Minister of Finance Chang Sheng-ford (張盛和) also said no such tax was being planned.
Meanwhile, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Te-fu (林德福) asked Jiang about the speculation that the tax was proposed to give the government an excuse to abandon its vision of an all-volunteer military.
Some have suggested that with the all-volunteer system getting off to a difficult start, the government proposed the tax to incite a backlash and then use that as an excuse to halt the program because of insufficient funding.
Jiang rejected the speculation, saying that the Ministry of National Defense has confidence in the all-volunteer system.
Acknowledging that recruitment drives failed to meet their targets last year, the premier said the situation has improved this year because the Cabinet agreed to raise stipends for volunteer soldiers.
“There’s no need to create a new tax to help fund the all-volunteer system,” Jiang said.
Taiwan plans to shift to an all-volunteer force by 2017.
It originally planned for the transition to be completed by next year, but pushed the date back due to lower-than-expected recruitment numbers.
To achieve the 2017 target, the government has been offering more incentives for young people to pursue a military career, including increasing the monthly duty allowances for new recruits.
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:
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