Minister of Transportation and Communications Hochen Tan (賀陳旦) yesterday said he will prepare a report within three months on the feasibility of introducing an exit tax at the border.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Ou-po (陳歐珀) called for the tax during a meeting of the the Legislative Yuan’s Transportation Committee yesterday, citing a similar tax that is to be implemented in Japan.
Chen said Japan expects its exit tax will earn it ¥40 billion (US$352.9 million) in annual revenue, adding that he hopes Hochen will follow through with the implementation of an exit tax in Taiwan.
The decision to collect an exit tax would require further evaluation of the proposal, Hochen said.
Japan is to charge outbound travelers, both its citizens and foreign travelers, ¥1,000 at its borders beginning in 2019, Chen said.
Exit taxes are in place in several nations, Chen said, citing NT$21.2 billion (US$702.22 million) collected annually by Australia and NT$6.9 billion collected annually by South Korea.
The taxes help the development of tourism in those nations, he said.
Outbound passengers in Taiwan pay a NT$500 airport service fee, of which a portion goes into a tourism development fund, Hochen said.
The nation’s tourism industry this year saw a decline in tourist numbers for the first time in 14 years, he said.
So far there has been a decline of 230,000 inbound tourists this year from last year, he said, adding that the nation has been ranked No. 30 among worldwide travel destinations by the World Economic Forum.
“It is the same ranking we held 10 years ago. We are not moving ahead,” he said.
Japan moved up from No. 25 a decade ago to No. 4 this year, while South Korea moved up from No. 42 to No. 19 during the same period, Hochen said.
Taiwan must return to the fundamentals and think about how to improve the quality of the tourism industry, he said.
This would work better for the industry than trying to think of how to bring in more tourists from China, Hochen said.
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
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
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