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.
ELECTRONICS BOOST: A predicted surge in exports would likely be driven by ICT products, exports of which have soared 84.7 percent from a year earlier, DBS said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast for Taiwan this year to 4 percent from 3 percent, citing robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI)-related exports and accelerated shipment activity, which are expected to offset potential headwinds from US tariffs. “Our GDP growth forecast for 2025 is revised up to 4 percent from 3 percent to reflect front-loaded exports and strong AI demand,” Singapore-based DBS senior economist Ma Tieying (馬鐵英) said in an online briefing. Taiwan’s second-quarter performance beat expectations, with GDP growth likely surpassing 5 percent, driven by a 34.1 percent year-on-year increase in exports, Ma said, citing government
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) market value closed above US$1 trillion for the first time in Taipei last week, with a raised sales forecast driven by robust artificial intelligence (AI) demand. TSMC saw its Taiwanese shares climb to a record high on Friday, a near 50 percent rise from an April low. That has made it the first Asian stock worth more than US$1 trillion, since PetroChina Co (中國石油天然氣) briefly reached the milestone in 2007. As investors turned calm after their aggressive buying on Friday, amid optimism over the chipmaker’s business outlook, TSMC lost 0.43 percent to close at NT$1,150
RSS