The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) yesterday announced a draft amendment to the Water Pollution Control Act (水汙染防治法), which proposes to impose a tax on wastewater discharged from science parks and industrial complexes starting from next year.
Households are also to be taxed depending on the amount of wastewater they produce from the fourth year following the enforcement of the levy, the draft showed.
EPA Minister Wei Kuo-yen (魏國彥) said that the taxes would come into effect as soon as February next year.
The agency plans to hold two public hearings next week and to announce the final version of the draft next month, Wei said.
Under the proposal, taxes would be implemented in three stages, with the first targeting industrial areas and science parks, such as photovoltaic and electronics companies.
Operators in the animal husbandry industry with ranches of a size exceeding the EPA’s specifications would be taxed starting from the third year, while households and owners of public or private drainage systems would be required to pay from the fourth year, according to the draft.
Wastewater containing heavy metals such as mercury, lead, copper, chromium, cadmium; toxic substances such as cyanide and arsenic; or any controlled pollutant listed by the agency are to be taxed, it said.
According to the draft, the amount of money due in tax payments is to be calculated by an equation that multiplies the quantity of effluent by the concentration levels of pollutants, then multiplying the number by rates determined by the EPA.
EPA Department of Water Quality Director Hsu Yung-hsing (許永興) said that companies and plant owners should boost efficiency by recycling wastewater or reducing the concentration of pollutants in preparation for the launch of the taxes.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods