Taiwan’s tax revenues declined year-on-year last month, driven by sharp drops in stock market turnover and property transactions, as consumer and investor sentiment was dampened by concerns over US tariffs and the central bank’s tightened credit controls, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
The national treasury collected NT$154.1 billion (US$5.08 billion) in tax revenue last month, down 3.1 percent from a year earlier, primarily due to a 31 percent drop to NT$17.8 billion in securities transaction tax revenue, ministry statistician Liu Shun-rong (劉訓蓉) said.
“Wild market volatility drove investors to the sidelines following an unprecedented stock rout on April 7 and a sharp rebound on April 10,” Liu said.
Photo: Clare Cheng, Taipei Times
The turbulence was triggered by US President Donald Trump’s announcement of “reciprocal” tariffs on specific countries, which sparked a global equities selloff, Liu said, adding that Trump later declared a 90-day pause in an attempt to calm market jitters.
Daily turnover on the local main board averaged NT$338.1 billion last month, a slump of 33.7 percent from NT$509.7 billion a year earlier, the ministry said.
Real-estate activity also weakened, with land value increment tax revenue falling 28.3 percent to NT$5.4 billion, and deed tax revenue dropping 27.1 percent to NT$1.2 billion, it said.
In addition to the negative wealth effect, the central bank’s ongoing credit controls continued to weigh on buying interest, Liu said.
Meanwhile, corporate income tax revenue entered negative territory, which Liu attributed primarily to major tax refunds.
Cumulative tax revenues in the first four months of the year fell 1.2 percent year-on-year to NT$708 billion, falling short of the government’s budget target by 2.3 percent, the ministry said.
That came as land value gains tax revenue in the first four months dropped 13.8 percent annually to NT$25.1 billion, while deed tax revenue declined 16.8 percent to NT$4.9 billion over the same period, it said.
Securities transaction tax revenue also slipped 15 percent to NT$74.8 billion over the same period, it added.
Gudeng Precision Industrial Co (家登精密), the sole extreme ultraviolet pod supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), yesterday said it has trimmed its revenue growth target for this year as US tariffs are likely to depress customer demand and weigh on the whole supply chain. Gudeng’s remarks came after the US on Monday notified 14 countries, including Japan and South Korea, of new tariff rates that are set to take effect on Aug. 1. Taiwan is still negotiating for a rate lower than the 32 percent “reciprocal” tariffs announced by the US in April, which it later postponed to today. The
ELECTRONICS: Strong growth in cloud services and smart consumer electronics offset computing declines, helping the company to maintain sales momentum, Hon Hai said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) on Saturday announced that its sales for last month rose 10 percent year-on-year, driven by strong growth in cloud and networking products amid the ongoing artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company, also known internationally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), reported consolidated sales of NT$540.24 billion (US$18.67 billion) for the month, the highest ever for the period, and a 10.09 percent increase from a year earlier, although it was down 12.26 percent from the previous month. Hon Hai, which is Apple Inc’s primary iPhone assembler and makes servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, said its cloud
Video streaming giant Netflix is launching a talent cultivation program in Taiwan aimed at producing high-quality Mandarin content, the company announced in a press release on Thursday. Netflix Chinese language content head Maya Huang (黃怡玫) said that Netflix has long invested in the Taiwanese market, citing the Netflix Fund for Creative Equity launched last year as an example. The fund would continue to dedicate resources to discovering content with the potential to be developed into Chinese-language projects, she added. The financing for the new talent projects seeks to create an ecosystem for content creators and professional development programs, she said. The talent projects
APPRECIATION: The central bank stepped in to stabilize the NT dollar after a surge in foreign institutional investment, triggered by optimism about tariffs and US Fed policy Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves hit a record high at the end of last month, as the central bank intervened in the currency market to curb the New Taiwan dollar’s appreciation against the US dollar. Foreign exchange reserves increased by US$5.48 billion from May, reaching an all-time high of US$598.43 billion, the central bank said on Friday. While the central bank did not disclose the scale of its intervention, Department of Foreign Exchange Director-General Eugene Tsai (蔡炯民) said that the currency market remained relatively stable until the middle of last month. However, a shift occurred following the US Federal Reserve’s signal of a
RSS