Real-estate transfers as gifts between spouses rose to a seven-year high last year as more families used the practice to avoid taxes, Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) said yesterday.
Last year, the number of property transfers as gifts rose to 49,805, with transfers between spouses spiking more than 10 percent to 13,973, the highest in seven years, the broker said, citing Ministry of the Interior data.
Taiwan Realty research head Charlene Chang (張旭嵐) said the trend took off after local governments in Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung and Pingtung in July last year enacted “house-hoarding taxes” on people owning multiple homes.
Photo: Hsu Yi-ping, Taipei Times
Local administrators raised property taxes to between 1.5 percent and 3.6 percent on a fourth unoccupied home, compared with 1.2 percent for a self-occupied and the first three homes, to help curb property speculation that is widely blamed for high home prices across Taiwan.
The hoarding taxes are expected to generate an extra NT$1 billion (US$33.1 million), the Ministry of Finance earlier said.
The move prompted multiple-home owners to gift properties to their spouses, which explains why gift taxes last year grew only 1.7 percent despite a large increase in property gifts, Chang said.
Property transfers as gifts between spouses are exempt from gift taxes, which range from 10 to 20 percent depending on the value of the gift.
The government last year raised the gift tax exemption from NT$2.2 million to NT$2.44 million annually per person to reflect inflationary pressures, which helped weigh on gift tax gains, Chang said.
Under the exemptions, parents can give their children real-estate gifts worth NT$4.88 million a year without paying taxes, she said.
Gift real-estate transfers are exempt from property gains taxes unless the receiver resells the property.
Property gains taxes in December last year reached a record high of NT$5.47 billion, which was helped by the taxes being extended to presale home purchase agreements, said Sinyi Realty Inc (信義房屋), the nation’s only listed broker.
The levy, which was introduced in 2016, would allow sellers tax exemptions of NT$4 million for owning homes for six years before selling them, Sinyi research manager Tseng Ching-der (曾進德) said, adding that he advised against short-term speculation.
Sellers can also save taxes by filing for property gains tax returns if they buy new homes within a certain period to demonstrate that the transactions resulted from allocation needs, he said.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
HSBC Holdings PLC is deepening its commitment to Taiwan as the economy emerges as one of the bank’s fastest-growing markets globally, driven by an artificial intelligence (AI) investment boom, expanding cross-border trade, and rising wealth creation. “The advantage that Taiwan has is a growth story linked to the semiconductor and broader AI industries, strong underlying corporate performance, and wealth creation,” said Surendra Rosha, HSBC’s co-chief executive for Asia and the Middle East, in an exclusive interview with the Taipei Times on June 2, during this year’s HSBC Taiwan Conference. That combination has helped HSBC cement its position as the most profitable international
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
RSS