Taiwan Publishes List Of Tax Debtors

by Mary Swire, Tax-News.com, Hong Kong

05 May 2010

Taiwan’s Ministry of Finance (MOF) has published a first list of taxpayers, both individuals and companies, who are said to owe the largest amounts of back taxes to the Inland Revenue Department.

In an attempt to strengthen tax collection, Taiwan parliament’s finance committee had approved a proposal in March this year that the MOF should, at regular intervals, publish a list of any person with more than TWD10m (USD318,500), and of any company with over TWD50m, in back taxes outstanding.

Their details and the amount of tax they owe are provided in two lists that contains over 1,500 names with tax debts totalling some TWD130bn. The Sunworld Dynasty Hotel is said to head the corporate list with overdue taxes of over TWD2bn, while the individual list shows the late Huang Jen-chung and his son, Juang Juo-ku, as owing taxes of TWD1.5bn and TWD1.7bn respectively. The information will remain on websites for a period of seven days.

It has been said that the total of outstanding tax had reached almost TWD315bn, or over 4% of annual tax revenue, by the end of 2009. While this compares favourably with other countries, the government is aware that there is a deadline of March 2012 set for collecting back taxes from some of those debtors.

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