The New Power Party (NPP) issued its housing policy platform yesterday, citing measures that seek to lower housing prices, make the housing rental market more transparent and hike housing taxes, which it said would reduce housing speculation and promote housing justice.
Party spokeswoman Yu Chia-chien (余佳蒨) said the party’s policy platforms aim to resolve the three main difficulties faced by Taiwan’s housing market.
Yu panned the housing policies and platforms presented by the Democratic Progressive Party government and other parties’ presidential candidates as “empty slogans and numbers,” adding that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party lacked the resolve to enforce or implement their policies.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
NPP legislator-at-large candidate Wang Pao-hsuan (王寶萱) said the government should provide more than just shelter when planning social housing, and should strive to create a social community that would answer the needs of child and elderly care, and facilities for youth innovation.
The community should be self-managed by the residents to reinforce grassroots democracy and ensure a coliving and coprosperous community, she added.
NPP legislator-at-large candidate Chen Tai-yuan (陳泰源), a senior housing sales agent, said that President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) had pledged in 2015 to “increase the costs of owning [multiple] houses,” but had waited until this year to issue a draft act, adding that the Executive Yuan’s version proposed a far less punishing tax rate than the NPP version, which pushed for a tax rate of 2.4 percent to 10 percent.
The tax rate under the House Tax Act (房屋稅條例) sits between 1.5 percent to 3.6 percent.
He said that the Executive Yuan’s draft act’s regulations against those owning more than one residence was nothing but a “slap on the wrist” when compared with the NPP version, which proposed increasing tax rates for empty housing.
The NPP also pushed to have a real-estate assessment committee formed by professionals and experts.
Chen said that more than 70 percent of landlords were not paying taxes while benefiting from rent income, adding that many tenants were afraid of applying for subsidies, fearing landlords’ retaliation by increasing the rent or refusing to continue the lease.
Chen suggested that Taiwan could reference Japan’s Land and Building Leases Act, which would give the current tenant priority when considering whether to continue the lease after the contract has come to term, adding that the act also stated that landlords were prohibited from taking back the property without a good reason and could not adjust the rent without a factual basis.
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