Electronic invoices will soon be available for the first time at brick-and-mortar stores on a trial basis, as part of a government plan to gradually replace paper receipts with e-invoicing by 2012, the Ministry of Finance said.
Customers who shop with smart cards or store membership cards at 27 designated 7-Eleven and Hi-Life convenience stores, or at Pxmart supermarkets, yesterday began to have their purchase information and invoice numbers automatically transferred to a database operated by the ministry’s Financial Data Center, Minister of Finance Lee Sush-der (李述德) said.
Other devices with built-in chips or radio-frequency identification, such as watches and cellphones, will also be used for e-invoicing in later stages of the project, Lee added.
About 11.5 billion invoices are printed every year, according to statistics. If 8 billion paper receipts could be replaced by electronic invoices a year, 80,000 trees could be saved, Lee said.
In an attempt to conserve resources, the ministry has decided to push for comprehensive e-invoicing to make shopping more convenient and eco-friendly.
The reform is estimated to reduce the invoice process cost by NT$7.4 billion (US$248 million) between this year and 2013. The reduction is forecast to reach as much as NT$120 billion once the whole country is using paperless invoices, Lee added.
Two further stages of the e-invoicing trial will take place at more shops and retailers in March and June, the ministry said.
Currently, online shops, TV shopping channels and -business-to-business firms have all already taken advantage of electronic billing since the ministry set up an e-invoice platform in 2006.
SMALL RESPITE: The past few rainy days, which came after one month of virtually no rain on the west coast, did not ease Taiwan’s water shortage problems, the CWB said A weather system from southern China has over the past three days replenished Taiwan’s reservoirs with almost 16 million tonnes of water, giving Taiwan a slight relief from a water shortage, the Water Resources Agency (WRA) said yesterday. From 12am on Tuesday to 4pm yesterday, about 15.97 million tonnes fell in the catchment areas of the nation’s reservoirs, which is slightly more than Taiwan’s average daily water use, it said. However, the rain would ease today, with only isolated showers forecast in Hualien and Taitung counties, as well as in southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said. For other regions, cloudy to
A debt dispute between a restaurant owner and a criminal ring might be behind a bizarre cockroach attack at the Taipei eatery on Monday night while it was hosting a police gathering, Taipei Police Commissioner Chen Jia-chang (陳嘉昌) said yesterday. Preliminary findings of a police investigation into the case at the G House Taipei suggest that the unusual incident might have been directed at the restaurant’s owner, who allegedly owes money to the Bamboo Union, Chen said. The suspects were Bamboo Union members and there was no evidence indicating that the cockroaches were targeted at the police officers at the restaurant, he
Taiwan’s armed forces should closely monitor China’s development of a new tanker aircraft, as it would significantly boost the Chinese air force’s capability to carry out long-range raids, a military expert said on Wednesday. Ou Si-fu (歐錫富), a research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said in an online article that China is developing a tanker variant of its Y-20 military transport aircraft, known as the Y-20U. The Y-20 has a maximum take-off weight of 220 tonnes and the tanker variant is expected to carry up to 60 tonnes of fuel, more than three times the maximum
TRAVELING WHILE CONTAGIOUS: The highest risk of infection is indoors, especially in settings where people take off their masks to eat and drink, an expert warned The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday posted a list of places visited by people who were recently diagnosed with COVID-19 while they were likely contagious, urging people who visited the sites at the same time to practice self-health management. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said that confirmed case No. 1,129 — a woman in her 60s who works at Novotel Taipei Taoyuan International Airport, a designated quarantine facility, and tested positive on Friday — visited Chiayi between Friday last week and Monday. On the first day of her trip, she visited the Big Chiayi
RSS