The Ministry of Finance yesterday said it collected NT$119.1 billion (US$3.98 billion) in tax revenue last month, an increase of 6.1 percent from a year earlier, bolstered by larger securities transactions and dividend payouts.
The overall gains in tax revenue came even though business activity and housing deals slackened amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Trading on the local bourse is vibrant this year, allowing securities transaction tax revenue to post growth for seven months straight,” Department of Statistics Deputy Director-General Chen Yu-feng (陳玉豐) said.
Photo: AFP / Sam Yeh
Stock transactions generated NT$9.4 billion in tax revenue, jumping 12.5 percent from a year earlier, with average daily turnover rising 21.19 percent from NT$155.2 billion to NT$186.4 billion last month, Chen said.
Like other stock markets worldwide, Taiwanese equity markets have seen wild swings, but reclaimed most of their losses to the COVID-19 outbreak, as local tech firms have benefited from remote working and learning arrangements, which boosted demand for laptops, tablets and information technology devices.
For the first four months of this year, stock transactions rose to a new high since the global financial crisis in 2009, Chen said.
Personal income tax revenue surged 49.5 percent to NT$29.3 billion last month, attributable primarily to the quarterly distribution of cash dividends by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker.
The ministry has voiced misgivings about the continued upturn in income tax revenue, as it has pushed back the deadline by one month for personal income tax filings this year from May 31 to June 30.
It would be better to make a final judgement after the dust settles, Chen said.
His warning came after corporate income tax revenue and business tax revenue both slipped into negative territory.
Chen pinned the blame on diminished economic activity and an oil price rout, which wreaked havoc on duties from imports of oil, chemical and mineral products.
Business tax revenue might fare worse this month, which reflects partial data for last month, Chen said.
The virus outbreak also weighed on property transactions. Revenue from land value increase tax last month declined 10.7 percent to NT$7.5 billion, with the number of deals shrinking 5.6 percent to 46,545, the ministry said in a report.
Cumulative property transactions totaled 187,121 cases from January to last month, falling 3.4 percent from the same period last year, it said.
However, liquor and tobacco tax revenue held firm with a 6.8 percent increase to NT$5.6 billion, despite a decline in dinner gatherings.
The ministry collected NT$519.6 billion of tax revenue in the first four months, an increase of 9.2 percent from a year earlier and ahead of its budget schedule by 8.6 percent.
STRONG INTEREST: Analysts have pointed to optimism in TSMC’s growth prospects in the artificial intelligence era as the cause of the rising number of shareholders The number of people holding shares of chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) hit a new high last week despite a decline in its stock price, the Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corp (TDCC, 台灣集保) said. The number of TSMC shareholders rose to 2.46 million as of Friday, up 75,536 from a week earlier, TDCC data showed. The stock price fell 1.34 percent during the same week to close at NT$1,840 (US$57.55). The decline in TSMC’s share price resulted from volatility in global tech stocks, driven by rising international crude oil prices as the war against Iran continues. Dealers said
PRICE HIKES: The war in the Middle East would not significantly disrupt supply in the short term, but semiconductor companies are facing price surges for materials Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not facing imminent supply disruptions of essential chemicals or raw materials due to the war in the Middle East, but surges in material costs loom large, industry association SEMI Taiwan said yesterday. The association’s comments came amid growing concerns that supplies of helium and other key raw materials used in semiconductor production could become a choke point after Qatar shut down its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and helium output earlier this month due to the conflict. Qatar is the second-largest LNG supplier in the world and accounts for about 33 percent of global helium output. Helium is
China is clamping down on fertilizer exports to protect its domestic market, industry sources said, putting an additional strain on global markets that were already grappling with shortages caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran. China is among the largest fertilizer exporters — shipping more than US$13 billion of it last year — and it has a history of controlling exports to keep prices low for farmers. Shipments through the war-blocked Strait of Hormuz account for about one-third of the sea-borne supply. This month, Beijing banned exports of nitrogen-potassium fertilizer blends and certain phosphate varieties, sources said. The ban, which has not
AMAZING ABUNDANCE: Elon Musk has announced plans for a new facility in Texas which would manufacture chips for Tesla and SpaceX to use in robotics and AI Elon Musk said his Terafab project — a grand plan to eventually manufacture his own chips for robotics, artificial intelligence (AI) and space data centers — would be built in Austin and jointly run by Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX). Musk, the chief executive officer of the two companies, said he would start off with an “advanced technology fab” in Austin that would have all of the equipment necessary to make chips of any kind. The project would call for one day supporting 1 terawatt (TW) of computing power per year, the amount Musk expects the companies to
RSS