The Ministry of Finance last month collected NT$95.1 billion (US$3.03 billion) of tax revenue, a mild 0.6 percent retreat from a year earlier, as the Lunar New Year holiday reduced working days and skewed the base comparison effect, it said yesterday.
However, tax revenues in the first two months of the year rose 16.9 percent annually to NT$318.5 billion after excluding the holiday effect, with pickups seen in most tax categories, the ministry said.
Last month, tax revenue from securities transactions rose 15.5 percent annually to NT$14.1 billion, despite fewer trading days, ministry statistics official Liu Shun-rong (劉訓蓉) said.
Photo: Clare Cheng, Taipei Times
Liu attributed the increase to an artificial intelligence (AI) frenzy that is attracting global funds to raise holdings in Taiwanese tech companies that supply electronics used in AI equipment and services.
That effect boosted the local exchange’s daily turnover to NT$468.4 billion last month, up 66.9 percent from a year earlier, he said.
Personal income tax revenue increased 6.4 percent to NT$43.9 billion last month on the back of cash dividends and property income gains, he said.
Taiwanese firms increasingly distribute cash dividends quarterly or semiannually, rather than annually in the third quarter as in the past.
At the same time, corporate income tax revenue soared 34.8 percent to NT$6.2 billion, due to income tax declaration plans, Liu said.
Tax revenue from land value increases last month dipped 2.7 percent to NT$5.5 billion, but the combined amount in the first two months soared 27.8 percent to NT$13.8 billion, indicating a recovery in the local property market, he said.
Likewise, sales tax revenue fell 17 percent to NT$12.5 billion last month due to holiday disruptions, but rose 5.1 percent over the first two months, he said.
Overall tax revenue in the first two months indicated that revenue is ahead of the government’s budget schedule by 9.5 percent, the ministry said.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
RSS