TAX
Luxury tax boosts coffers
The Ministry of Finance said yesterday a total of NT$1.45 billion (US$48.25 million) in revenue has been submitted to national coffers either as overdue payments or fines as of the end of last month after its inspection of the collection of the luxury tax. The ministry found 2,618 problematic cases of property transactions that should have been subject to the special sales tax as of the end of last month. The tax was introduced in June 2011. A total of 1,352 cases generated NT$732.28 million in overdue payments, with the other 1,266 cases fines that totaled NT$722.22 million, the ministry’s data showed.
ELECTRONICS
Firms get iWatch orders
Two leading Taiwanese electronics companies that assemble products for Apple Inc have received orders to make the highly anticipated “iWatch,” an analyst and reports said yesterday. “Apple is likely to introduce the iWatch in 2014. From our channel checks, Inventec (英業達) is the major assembly source for iWatch, with about 60 percent of the order allocation,” CIMB Securities analyst Wanli Wang (王萬里) said in a report. CIMB forecast a total of 63.4 million iWatch shipments in the year after its launch at an average price of about US$199. The Chinese-language Apple Daily said Quanta Computer (廣達) was handed 40 percent of the order allocation, citing unnamed sources.
SPECULATION: The central bank cut the loan-to-value ratio for mortgages on second homes by 10 percent and denied grace periods to prevent a real-estate bubble The central bank’s board members in September agreed to tighten lending terms to induce a soft landing in the housing market, although some raised doubts that they would achieve the intended effect, the meeting’s minutes released yesterday showed. The central bank on Sept. 18 introduced harsher loan restrictions for mortgages across Taiwan in the hope of curbing housing speculation and hoarding that could create a bubble and threaten the financial system’s stability. Toward the aim, it cut the loan-to-value ratio by 10 percent for second and subsequent home mortgages and denied grace periods for first mortgages if applicants already owned other residential
EXPORT CONTROLS: US lawmakers have grown more concerned that the US Department of Commerce might not be aggressively enforcing its chip restrictions The US on Friday said it imposed a US$500,000 penalty on New York-based GlobalFoundries Inc, the world’s third-largest contract chipmaker, for shipping chips without authorization to an affiliate of blacklisted Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯). The US Department of Commerce in a statement said GlobalFoundries sent 74 shipments worth US$17.1 million to SJ Semiconductor Corp (盛合晶微半導體), an affiliate of SMIC, without seeking a license. Both SMIC and SJ Semiconductor were added to the department’s trade restriction Entity List in 2020 over SMIC’s alleged ties to the Chinese military-industrial complex. SMIC has denied wrongdoing. Exports to firms on the list
ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip assembly and testing manufacturing (ATM) service provider, expects to double its leading-edge advanced technology services revenue next year to more than US$1 billion, benefiting from strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips, a company executive said on Thursday. That would be the second year that ASE has doubled its advanced chip packaging and testing technology revenue, following an estimate of more than US$500 million for this year. ASE is one of the major beneficiaries from the AI boom as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is outsourcing production of advanced chip
TECHNOLOGY EXIT: The selling of Apple stock might be related to the death of Berkshire vice chairman Charlie Munger last year, an analyst said Billionaire Warren Buffett is now sitting on more than US$325 billion in cash after continuing to unload billions of US dollars worth of Apple Inc and Bank of America Corp shares this year and continuing to collect a steady stream of profits from all of Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s assorted businesses without finding any major acquisitions. Berkshire on Saturday said it sold off about 100 million more Apple shares in the third quarter after halving its massive investment in the iPhone maker the previous quarter. The remaining stake of about 300 million shares was valued at US$69.9 billion at the end of