Tax revenues last month totaled NT$171.2 billion (US$5.93 billion), slumping 30.6 percent from the same time last year, as COVID-19 relief measures gave affected companies a respite in filing corporate income, the Ministry of Finance said on Wednesday.
Corporate income tax was NT$84.5 billion, representing a 47 percent plunge from a year earlier, the ministry said.
Department of Statistics Deputy Director-General Chen Yu-feng (陳玉豐) said that tax revenues might not meet the target for the whole of this year despite prodigious increases in property and securities transaction taxes.
For the first 10 months, corporate income taxes totaled NT$461.7 billion, a 27 percent decline from a year earlier, mainly due to weaker profitability among Taiwanese companies and a tax cut from 10 percent to 5 percent on retaining income.
Revenue from securities transaction taxes last month increased 14.1 percent to NT$9.9 billion, with daily stock turnover soaring 31 percent to NT$206.4 billion, Chen said, adding that the full-year figure would hit a record high.
Securities transaction taxes accumulated to NT$116.9 billion, beating last year’s total for the period by 59.5 percent, the ministry said.
Revenue from land value increment taxes rose 12.9 percent to NT$10.3 billion, thanks to a hefty increase in the number of taxable cases by 7.2 percent to 55,065, the ministry said.
Tobacco and liquor tax revenue rose 15.1 percent to NT$6.8 billion, helped by an increase in consumption, indicating that the negative effects from the pandemic have probably died out.
The treasury collected NT$2.64 trillion in tax revenue between January and last month, representing a 5.2 percent retreat from the same period last year, the ministry said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained