The deadline for filing tax returns for last year and making payments has been extended by a month, to June 30, in part to prevent crowding at National Taxation Bureau offices amid a COVID-19 outbreak, the Ministry of Finance said on Wednesday.
The extension applies to individual and business filings, it added.
The ministry made the announcement hours after Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said that the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) might raise the domestic COVID-19 warning to a near-lockdown level over the next few days.
Photo: Hung Mei-hsiu, Taipei Times
If the domestic warning is raised from level 2 to level 3, indoor gatherings of more than five people and outdoor gatherings of more than 10 people would be prohibited, said Chen, who head’s the CECC.
If the alert level is raised, people would not be able to file their tax returns in person, so the deadline needed to be pushed back from May 31 to June 30, the ministry said.
The extension would hopefully help to prevent crowding at tax offices across the nation, the ministry said, encouraging people to file their returns online.
However, the June 30 deadline does not apply to property taxes, which people are encouraged to pay online after receiving their bill from the tax bureau, the ministry said.
As of Sunday, more than 2 million people, or about 30 percent of the nation’s taxpayers, had filed their returns, ministry data showed.
Last year, the ministry also extended the tax deadline due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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