Minister of Finance Chang Sheng-ford (張盛和) yesterday rejected the idea of cutting the futures transaction tax, saying historical data showed that such a cut would not spur trading momentum in the futures market.
A task force formed by the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) and the Ministry of Finance (MOF) to review financial services taxes held its first meeting yesterday afternoon, with financial institutions expressing the hope that the government would reduce their burden by cutting taxes.
The futures transaction tax — currently at 0.004 percent — was one of the taxes that local financial institutions proposed the government cut or even cancel to attract more foreign investors to Taiwan’s futures market.
“The ministry will not agree to cutting the futures transaction tax,” Chang said during a question-and-answer session at a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee yesterday morning, before the task force held its meeting.
Chang said the ministry had adjusted downward the futures transaction tax rate in the past, but there had been no corresponding rise in futures’ trading volume.
The rate was lowered from 0.01 percent in 2006 to 0.004 percent in 2008, ministry data showed.
Chang added that the weak momentum in the securities market this year might significantly drag down revenue from the securities transaction tax for the full year, which the government has set at NT$126.7 billion (US$4.3 billion).
Securities transaction tax revenue shrank 27.5 percent from a year earlier to NT$49.3 billion in the first eight months of the year, the lowest level since the same period in 2005, ministry data showed.
Based on current trends, revenue from securities transactions could be more than NT$40 billion short of this year’s target, Chang said.
The minister also denied that a proposal to impose a capital gains tax on securities transactions was behind the slow trading volume in the first half of the year, putting the blame on uncertainty because of the eurozone’s lingering debt crisis.
During the Finance Committee meeting earlier yesterday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) also raised concern over the latest changes to the Department of Health’s proposed second-generation National Health Insurance (NHI) program, saying it might fail to generate enough revenue to support the lossmaking insurance program.
On Saturday, the department said it was raising the lowest threshold at which a 2 percent supplementary premium is to be levied on non-payroll income from NT$2,000 to NT$5,000.
Domestic banks may need to help collect a total of NT$2.79 billion in fees a year for the insurance program, Lu said, citing the department’s forecast.
However, the program may also have to spend NT$2.74 billion in costs annually on domestic banks’ collection transfer services, which would offset a large amount of the fees received, Lu added.
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