Organization: Ministry of Education, Computer Center NETNEWS system V2.3
Date: Friday, 6 Nov 1992 09:51:02 EST
From: <NTITT041@TWNMOE10.BITNET>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.taiwan
Subject:    Today's news in Taiwan

A few people has send me e-mails to encourge me to post what I see in
Taipei. The following is today's news and the backgrounds.

The two newly resigned members of cabinet have created election shock.
According to a poll, Shao-Kan Chao (newly resigned head of Environment
Bureau) and Chien-Shen Wang (formerly resigned head of Department of
Finance) will draw 27% and 36% votes in Taipei county and Taipei South,
respectively. There are about twenty some candidates in Taipei county
+
and the South side of Taipei city. The highest rate a candidate has
obtained was 8.9% before these two joined the election for
legislators. The follwings are the backgrounds:

Wang resigned because he insisted to collect land taxes
according to the actual trade value. The current policy is to collect
land taxes according to the publisized value, which is usually many
times (up to 20) below the actual value. The continually increasing
land price is mainly because financial giants have utilized the
current policy to fry (increase) the land prices for personal gains
such as avoid taxes. One simple example, as illustrated by Wang, was
that a company can ask a friend to buy a land first. The company then
purchases the land from the friend with a unusually high price. The
friend need not to pay a penny of tax because he did not earn
a penny according to the publisized land price (the price is the same
for the whole year). As result, the company has a huge loss in annual
report due to the purchase of the land. The stock holders can not
have a fair share of company's gains. The government collects no land
tax. The company has successfully transfered a lot of money to the
friend who will share his tax free profit with the big stock holders.
However, many financial giants have stirred up a turmoil to against Wang
through their legislators. For some reason, President Lee also mentioned
that Wang's policy is not practical and a possible policy is the best
policy. Lee even said that fairness should not be concerned in policy
making (to my big surprise). Wang resigned afterward. Hundreds of
citizens send in flowers and letters to show their supports to Wang
during that period. The poll shows that many citizens support Wang
because they hate the money contaminated politics. Up to the present
time, KMT has not made a decision whether they will approve Wang's
application for election (since Wang is a member of KMT).

Chao resigned because the Legislation Yen has tried to approve some
ridiculous laws. One particular incident was that the fruit and
vegestable venders have refused the sale taxes (which was 1% and they
have added the taxes to the sale prices) for many years. After many
years' fighting, they succeeded to reduce the tax rate to 0.1% in 1988.
Still many did not pay the taxes. Last month, they asked the legislators
to modify the laws so that the 0.1% can be applied to the years before
1988. And the legislators have made it passed the first round. (Many
legislators were busy in running their elections and the big mouths of
the legislators of DPP were unusually quite in the process.) According
to common sense of law, you can not change the law which was approved
and implemented in the past. This has utterly hurt the image of
Legislation Yen since it is run by a bunch of legislators who can sell
their consciences for votes (Those legislators who pushed through the case
were fighting to get a chance to speak to hundreds of venders in front
of the Legislation Yen building to be credited for the SUCCESS.)
Although the case was not approved after certain negotiations (the
Execution Yen will find a way to help those venders without changing the
law), this incident and a few similar strange ones caused Chao to resign
and join the election. His case is still pending for KMT's approval
(Chao is a member of KMT too). Similar to Wang, Chao strongly opposes
influences from financial giants in politics.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.taiwan