Legislators across party lines yesterday passed a measure extending a reduced transaction tax on stock trades for day traders to 2027, which a trade association said would help maintain a high level of market activity.
The amendment to the Securities Transaction Tax Act (證券交易稅條例) would maintain a preferential 0.15 percent transaction tax rate for investors who buy and sell the same stocks in the same session.
The lower rate, which has been in place since April 2017, but was set to expire yesterday, is half the normal transaction tax rate of 0.3 percent, and was originally adopted to drum up trading volume on Taiwan’s stock markets.
Photo: CNA
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆), who introduced a proposed amendment to the act, said the lower tax on day trading was worth extending, as it has had a positive effect on stock market activity and tax revenue.
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) on Monday urged lawmakers to vote for another extension, saying that failure to do so would risk complicating revenue collection and harming market sentiment.
Financial Supervisory Commission Deputy Chairman Chen Yen-liang (陳彥良) said on Dec. 23 that without the three-year extension, stock trading volume could shrink 30 percent.
The amendment still needs to be signed by the president and promulgated before it takes effect.
Following passage of the amendment, the Taiwan Securities Association said the transaction rate tax cut would continue to benefit market activity, as day trading accounts for about one-fifth of trading volumes and about 40 percent of total market turnover in Taiwan.
The tax cut has been credited with helping to boost turnover in the country’s US$2.5 trillion stock market, the world’s 10th-largest by value.
The benchmark TAIEX closed 0.67 percent lower yesterday, paring an earlier decline of as much as 0.9 percent. The gauge gained 28.47 percent this year, the biggest annual return since 2009, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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