Legislators yesterday gave preliminary approval to a draft bill that offers commodity tax cuts for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG)-powered hybrid cars to help the country reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The bill proposed lowering the commodity tax on LPG hybrid vehicles by NT$25,000 (US$861.8) for a five-year period. However, to encourage more people to buy the hybrids, some lawmakers suggested increasing tax cuts.
Automobile companies pay a commodity tax rate of between 25 percent and 30 percent of the factory value of a car, which they then pass on to buyers, Ministry of Finance data showed.
“The bill, if passed, may push local automobile firms to develop or to import more environment-friendly models, while encouraging consumers to buy less polluting vehicles,” Minister of Finance Lee Sush-der (李述德) said during a question-and-answer session at the legislature.
Passage of the bill would help the nation reduce energy consumption and cut greenhouse gas emissions, and follows the Cabinet’s strategy of encouraging energy-saving electric vehicles, Lee said.
The tax breaks for LPG hybrid car distributors may create a demand for 5,200 LPG hybrid cars in total in the next five years, which would reduce tax income by an estimated NT$136.5 million, the ministry said.
The ministry expects the legislative second and third readings of the bill to go smoothly.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
POWER BUILDUP: Powered by Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell chips, the data center would support MediaTek’s computing power demand and business growth, the company said Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center with a maximum capacity of 45 megawatts to meet its rising demand for computing power required to develop new advanced chips for AI applications. The company has completed the first-phase computing power buildup at the data center in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), providing 15 megawatts of capacity to support its research and development (R&D) capabilities, despite an industrywide shortage of key components, MediaTek said. Supply constraints have plagued a wide range of key components, including memory chips, solid-state drives, power supply units and central
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
RSS