Lawmakers yesterday passed the Act on Savings Accounts for the Education and Development of Children and Teenagers (兒童及少年未來教育與發展帳戶條例), which requires the Ministry of Health and Welfare to match deposits into education savings accounts by low and middle-income families and requires local governments to advise families in those income brackets within their jurisdiction to open such accounts.
The act applies to the accounts of children born after Jan. 1, 2016, to certified low and middle-income households, or children who have been placed under the custody of local governments for at least two years.
The act stipulates that local governments should advise the legal guardians of children in low and middle-income households within their jurisdiction to set up a savings account for the children within one month of identifying such households.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
Legal guardians may decide the amount of money to deposit into the account every month until the child is 18, up to a maximum of NT$15,000 per year, the act says.
The ministry would then match the deposits made by legal guardians each year, meaning that each child would be able to receive a maximum of NT$30,000 in yearly savings.
To avoid the savings accounts negatively affecting qualified households, which could discourage them from establishing such accounts, the act stipulates that money deposited into the accounts should not be considered assets, meaning they would not be taxed.
The savings cannot be used to repay debts or as collateral, and cannot be sequestered by law enforcement agencies or subjected to any other enforced measures under the law, the act says.
The legislation was drafted to help President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) realize her policy of helping poor children and orphans fulfill their dreams by establishing a fund for their education and careers, providing them a better chance to achieve higher education levels and avoid low-paying jobs, the ministry said in a statement.
Children placed under government care are a minority who have a greater need to achieve financial independence, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lee Li-feng (李麗芬) said.
The joint deposits by guardians and the government would help these children reach higher levels of education, diversify their options in life and help them escape poverty, she said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lee Yen-hsiu (李彥秀) lauded the legislation, saying that after 18 years of planning, the system for savings accounts has finally come into fruition.
However, she raised concerns about a potentially heavier burden on social workers due to the act’s passage, saying that is a matter the ministry should take note of.
The Social Assistance Act (社會救助法) defines low-income households as those whose average income per person is less than the minimum cost of living published by the ministry, while middle-income families are those whose average income per person is less than 1.5 times that minimum.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) was wooing leaders from across Africa with a banquet on Wednesday night, King Mswati III of Eswatini was notably absent. That is because the kingdom — about the size of New Jersey and with just 1.2 million people — is one of Taiwan’s remaining dozen diplomatic allies. That means Eswatini does not participate in Xi’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, the centerpiece of China’s diplomatic outreach to Africa, which was held in Beijing this week. The landlocked nation, which sits between Mozambique and South Africa, is the last holdout in Beijing’s seven-plus decade mission to make Africa
RSS