Chinese-language Next Magazine yesterday reported that Lee Chia-feng (李佳芬), the wife of Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), allegedly evaded taxes totalling NT$818,000 (US$26,806 at the current exchange rate) in 2011 after underreporting her capital gains from a home sale by NT$4.4 million.
Ye Yuan-zhi (葉元之), the spokesman for Han’s campaign headquarters, yesterday denied that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate’s wife had evaded taxes.
Lee’s accountant had calculated the taxes differently from the National Taxation Bureau, Ye said.
Photo: Hsu Li-chuan, Taipei Times
Lee in 2007 purchased a pre-sale luxury apartment with a plot of land in New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋) for nearly NT$40 million, Next Magazine said.
In March 2010, just 15 days after she registered the apartment and land in her name, she sold them for NT$58 million, the magazine said.
When declaring her taxes for that year, Lee underreported her capital gains from the home sale by NT$4.4 million, and was later required by the National Taxation Bureau of the Central Area to pay back NT$818,000 for the home sale and other missed taxes, as well as a fine of NT$409,000, it said.
The case went to court, but eventually Lee lost after the Supreme Administrative Court overruled her appeal in 2016, it said.
Asked about the report, Ye said that what Lee encountered was “just something that ordinary people have to deal with.”
“It was definitely not evading taxes,” he said, adding that any attempt to portray the case as such would be an injustice.
The bureau did not inform Lee that she had paid her taxes incorrectly until five or six year after she declared them, he said.
Lee appealed the decision because her accountant believed that the bureau calculated the taxes according to new regulations implemented after Lee first declared them, Ye said.
If what Lee did should be described as evading taxes, then President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) brother would be worse, he said.
Tsai’s brother purchased fake recipes and was fined more than NT$10 million for it, Ye said.
“That is what you should call deliberately evading taxes,” he said.
Asked if Lee was engaging in speculative real-estate investments, having sold her Banciao home just 15 days after registering it in her name, Ye said that members of the public would make their own judgements.
“Every housing purchase and sale by Han and Lee has already been released,” he added.
Han’s campaign office on Nov. 16 released a list of six homes that the couple purchased after reports that they bought multiple homes.
Of the six homes, five have bee sold, including the Banciao apartment, which appeared to be the only profitable deal the couple made.
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