Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday rejected claims that the city government’s plan to reduce tax for residents with only one property, which they occupy, was “policy vote-buying.”
The tax on self-occupied property for city residents who only have one house would be reduced from 1 percent to 0.6 percent starting next year, the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported yesterday, citing Taipei City Government Deputy Secretary-General Chen Chih-ming (陳志銘).
It would be the second time the tax has been reduced in four years if the policy is implemented, and more than 200,000 households are expected to benefit from it when paying taxes in 2021, it reported.
Photo: Shen Pei-yao, Taipei Times
The property tax for residents with two to three houses could be increased to 1.2 percent, and to 3.6 percent for those with three or more houses, the newspaper reported.
The policy was criticized by Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City Councilor Wang Shih-chien (王世堅) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Councilor Wang Hong-wei (王鴻薇), who said that it was part of Ko’s strategy to win votes, as he might run for president next year.
When asked for comment yesterday, Ko said “policy vote-buying should be done before an election, not after an election.”
“The concept of reducing self-occupied property tax for people who only have one property is that ... residential property should be considered a basic necessity, but if you have three or four apartments to rent to other people, that is a different case,” he said.
“Apartments should be for living in, not for real-estate speculation,” Ko said, adding that the tax rate should be lower for self-occupied apartments and higher for additional apartments.
Not every policy is linked to election considerations, he said.
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