The latest version of the capital gains tax proposal by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative caucus could contribute NT$6 billion (US$200.6 million) to NT$7 billion per year to the national coffers, Minister of Finance Chang Sheng-ford (張盛和) said yesterday.
Chang said the ministry was ready to adopt the latest tax bill on securities investments proposed by the KMT caucus, as it believes this version has gained a high consensus among the public.
“The spirit of the Cabinet’s proposed tax draft has been incorporated into the KMT caucus’ version,” Chang said on the sidelines of a legislative question-and-answer session.
Compared with other versions, Chang said the KMT tax bill would have the least impact on the stock market, with the tax being levied based on the stock market’s index level from next year to 2014.
Moreover, capital gains from individual investments in initial public offerings will not be levied retroactively, with the ministry set to pick Dec. 31 of this year as the basis for identifying the stock’s cost, which would be more favorable to IPO investors, Chang said.
As for Hon Hai Group (鴻海集團) chairman Terry Gou’s (郭台銘) appeal to directly tax the nation’s wealthy people and halt the deliberations on a capital gains tax, Chang said he appreciated Gou’s suggestions and admired his move.
“However, the two taxes are different in nature and are not interchangeable,” Chang said at a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee. “The ministry has no plans to impose a tax on the rich for now or in the near future.”
Asked about the nation’s rising debt problem, Chang told legislators he does not expect a further increase in the central government’s debt ceiling from the current 40 percent, as he believes the fiscal deficit will gradually improve.
National debt per capita declined to NT$223,000 per person as of the end of last month, dropping by NT$2,000 from the previous month and ending six straight months of increases, ministry statistics released yesterday showed.
The national debt, which includes the central government’s long-term and short-term debts, reached NT$5.174 trillion as of the end of last month, data showed.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
RSS