The New Power Party (NPP) will propose a taxpayer protection act, NPP Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said yesterday.
“We will propose a draft legislation on the protection of taxpayer rights this session,” he said at a public hearing on taxpayer rights at the Legislative Yuan.
Huang cited the need to address the issue of “eternal” tax assessments, which perpetually cycle through the legal appeals system.
“When someone does not agree with the government’s assessment, even if they win an appeal at the Supreme Administrative Court, the case would be sent back to the original agency and if they make a similar assessment, the only option is to through the appeals process again in a never-ending cycle,” he said, adding that the draft legislation would set up a separate tax court system to address the problem.
National Taiwan University professor of law Gee Keh-Chang (葛克昌) said the tax law denies many common rights to taxpayers.
“We do not have the sense of not penalizing people arbitrarily. Things like the right to remain silent and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, which apply in criminal law, disappear in tax law — you are actually required to prove that you have cooperated fully,” he said, adding that some judges have been unwilling to use the principle of “proportional punishment” in tax cases, because it is not explicitly included in tax law.
Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾), an accountant and president of the Republic of China Association of Tax Agents, said government auditors should bear responsibility if their assessments are overturned in court, because of the high costs that appeals place on businesses.
“The appeals process is extremely drawn out and not all small business have the resources to hire their own lawyers or accountants,” she said. “While they are making an appeal, they still have to bear the burden of paying for the assessment, which could involve their home and bank accounts being frozen. Your company could go bankrupt even if you win the appeal.”
An increase in Taiwanese boats using China-made automatic identification systems (AIS) could confuse coast guards patrolling waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast and become a loophole in the national security system, sources familiar with the matter said yesterday. Taiwan ADIZ, a Facebook page created by enthusiasts who monitor Chinese military activities in airspace and waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast, on Saturday identified what seemed to be a Chinese cargo container ship near Penghu County. The Coast Guard Administration went to the location after receiving the tip and found that it was a Taiwanese yacht, which had a Chinese AIS installed. Similar instances had also
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