Tax revenue last month totaled NT$214.7 billion (US$7.05 billion), rising 5.9 percent from the same period a year earlier on the back of record-high tariffs and inheritance taxes as demand for imported vehicles rose, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
The data were in line with a boom in vehicles sales, a chill in property transactions and signs of a recovery on the local bourse, ministry statistics official Liang Kuan-shuan (梁冠璇) told an online media briefing.
Tariffs and inheritance taxes, unusual revenue growth drivers, spiked 30.6 percent and 97.2 percent year-on-year to NT$14.9 billion and NT$5.2 billion respectively, Liang said, adding that it was not clear whether the uptrend would continue.
Photo: Clare Cheng, Taipei Times
Tariffs from imported vehicles totaled NT$4.1 billion, Liang said.
Vehicles packed local ports waiting for their owners, a rare sight after port congestion amid COVID-19 lockdowns ended, she said.
Car imports also helped boost the sales tax total by 20.2 percent to NT$14.7 billion, she said.
The number of new license plates issued last month more than doubled to 44,161, Chinese-language media reported earlier.
The ministry declined to supply details for the surge in inheritance taxes except to say there were three cases that generated more than NT$100 million.
Inheritance tax rates are unpredictable, it added.
By contrast, land value increment taxation totaled NT$6.9 billion, down 36 percent from a year earlier, as taxable cases decreased 22.9 percent to 49,552, consistent with a cooling property market, Liang said.
Taxes from securities transactions, a gauge of stock investment interest, shrank 19.5 percent to NT$17.6 billion, reversing a rebound in February, ministry data showed.
The February rebound in securities transactions had a lot to do with the effect of national holidays, so the data were not overly significant, Liang said.
While daily turnover continued its negative cyclical movements, the pace of retreat has tapered off, she said, adding that things might improve as evidenced by TAIEX rallies in the past few weeks.
In the first quarter, tax revenue totaled NT$487.2 billion, a 0.9 percent increase from the same period last year, the ministry said.
The total was 15.9 percent of this year’s budget, 13.5 percent ahead of the schedule, it said.
DOLLAR CHALLENGE: BRICS countries’ growing share of global GDP threatens the US dollar’s dominance, which some member states seek to displace for world trade US president-elect Donald Trump on Saturday threatened 100 percent tariffs against a bloc of nine nations if they act to undermine the US dollar. His threat was directed at countries in the so-called BRICS alliance, which consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Malaysia have applied to become members and several other countries have expressed interest in joining. While the US dollar is by far the most-used currency in global business and has survived past challenges to its preeminence, members of the alliance and other developing nations say they are fed
LIMITED MEASURES: The proposed restrictions on Chinese chip exports are weaker than previously considered, following lobbying by major US firms, sources said US President Joe Biden’s administration is weighing additional curbs on sales of semiconductor equipment and artificial intelligence (AI) memory chips to China that would escalate the US crackdown on Beijing’s tech ambitions, but stop short of some stricter measures previously considered, said sources familiar with the matter. The restrictions could be unveiled as soon as next week, said the sources, who emphasized that the timing and contours of the rules have changed several times, and that nothing is final until they are published. The measures follow months of deliberations by US officials, negotiations with allies in Japan and the Netherlands, and
Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) yesterday said it expects any impact of new tariffs from US president-elect Donald Trump to hit the company less than its rivals, citing its global manufacturing footprint. Young Liu (劉揚偉), chairman of the contract manufacturer and key Apple Inc supplier, told reporters after a forum in Taipei that it saw the primary impact of any fresh tariffs falling on its clients because its business model is based on contract manufacturing. “Clients may decide to shift production locations, but looking at Foxconn’s global footprint, we are ahead. As a result, the impact on us is likely smaller compared to
TECH COMPETITION: The US restricted sales of two dozen types of manufacturing equipment and three software tools, and blacklisted 140 more Chinese entities US President Joe Biden’s administration unveiled new restrictions on China’s access to vital components for chips and artificial intelligence (AI), escalating a campaign to contain Beijing’s technological ambitions. The US Department of Commerce slapped additional curbs on the sale of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and chipmaking gear, including that produced by US firms at foreign facilities. It also blacklisted 140 more Chinese entities that it accused of acting on Beijing’s behalf, although it did not name them in an initial statement. Full details on the new sanctions and Entity List additions were to be published later yesterday, a US official said. The US “will
RSS