The National Tax Administration is taking a close look at owners of funeral parlors with a view to enforcing the declaration of all trans-actions with customers.
About 50 funeral parlor owners held a protest outside the Legislative Yuan yesterday morning, angry over possible measures that will require them to list each transaction associated with organizing funerals on invoices provided to families of the bereaved.
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
"How an invoice comes about in our business is very complicated, since there are many transactions that we handle on behalf of families of those who have died. Only at the very end do we produce a comprehensive invoice for the family, and if the National Tax Administration is going to tax us for every single transaction, it would increase overall funeral costs by about 25 percent -- a huge burden on both undertakers and families," said Huang Chun-hsia (黃春夏), an undertaker with 20 years' experience who started his own business in Banciao, Taipei County, eight months ago.
Huang said that for every funeral, there are many tasks that need to be "outsourced." An undertaker's role was to pay these outsourcing costs, which are then added to the total cost and charged to the family once a funeral has been completed.
"In a traditional funeral, examples of outsourced tasks include the master of ceremonies, the band that plays during the funeral procession and so on. So cash transactions are made all the time, and that's the way this industry has operated for years," Huang said.
In response, the National Tax Administration said it had been conducting research for five months into families who had held funerals and funeral parlor owners who provided their services to get a better picture of how the industry functions and to devise a more practical method of taxation.
"At present there are two ways in which a funeral parlor may file taxes: a voluntary tax report every two months, or occasional audits by the tax office based on an estimate of the trade volume of a particular business. However, because of the absence of proper tax invoices in many transactions, many businesses manage to get away with paying less than they normally should," said a tax officer, who wished to remain anonymous.
The officer said the research suggested many families never received unified invoices from undertakers.
"For this reason, we also visit funeral parlors to understand what outgoing and incoming financial transactions they are making on behalf of families of the bereaved," the officer said.
The officer said that research and analysis would continue for another four years before a comprehensive tax system for the funeral industry could be designed and implemented.
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