The Cabinet on Monday approved a draft amendment to the Commodity Tax Act (貨物稅條例), which would extend exemptions for electric vehicles (EVs) until the end of 2025.
Under the current law on commodity taxation, people who buy all-electric vehicles valued at less than NT$1.4 million (US$50,378) from Jan. 28, 2017, to Dec. 31 are exempt from the tax, the Ministry of Finance said in a statement on Monday.
As EVs account for a small share of the auto market and the supply chain is still in its development stage, the ministry said it proposed a draft revision extending the exemption period to encourage purchases of low-emission, high energy-efficient electric-powered vehicles.
The extension is also aimed at promoting the development of the EV industry, achieving the government’s policy goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and creating a sustainable environment nationwide.
A total of 430,000 electric vehicles purchases had benefited from the exemption as of last month, ministry statistics showed.
The tax exemption cost the government about NT$439 million in tax revenue in 2017, NT$539 million in 2018, NT$717 million in 2019 and NT$2.1 billion last year, the data showed.
In the first 10 months of this year, the exemption reduced government revenue by NT$2.06 billion, the data showed.
Earlier this month, the Cabinet approved a draft amendment to the Vehicle License Tax Act (使用牌照稅法) that would extend a license tax exemption for electric vehicles until the end of 2025. It is set to expire on Dec. 31.
The bills have to be approved by the legislature.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
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