Imagine if they only gave it to the Taiwanese and didn’t give it to the foreigners from china that have been here for generations, naturalized and made taiwan what it is today through hard work and paying taxes. Always convenient when ones own group prints it’s own citizenship
Don’t play coy with us, just because you have a Taiwanese wife and are sitting there in your Danshui castle surrounded by stimulus vouchers and other free money the rest of us paid for.
The point is that you just underdeclare your taxes, thus stimulating yourself when the Taiwanese government won’t. Not that such things should be endorsed, of course.
Well, I suspect what will happen, yeah. But I’m trying to remember… weren’t APRC holders lumped in a couple of stimulus rounds ago, sort of at the last minute? I forget what’s been the situation for ARC holders.
Certainly this one being specifically referred to as getting taxes returned, when I’ve paid my fair share of taxes, would stick in my craw more if we don’t get it.
Feel free to call me naive, but as far as I know Taiwan democracy is built namely from Japan, who themselves took over a lot of constitutional things from Germany.
Here in Germany we have a kind of “high-court”, which looks over the constitution and therefore constantly watching over the federal government to overrule such idiotic rules (I assume we all agree on this).
Taiwan supposedly does not have such a court, right ? So any government is free to do whatever they want ?
Yeah, it was APRC holders (the smallest group of resident foreigners in Taiwan), people with Taiwanese spouses (who might be able to influence their spouse’s vote), and diplomats (“Taiwan can help!”). I think you’re right that at least APRC holders were included in the first stimulus scheme as a kind of last-minute afterthought, presumably in a token effort to look inclusive while still achieving the key goal of discriminating against migrant workers (>80% of resident foreigners).
I think it’s quite obvious what will happen here:
(i) The news comes out that the Taiwanese government is considering this and finalizing the plan.
(ii) A few of us (but not many) complain about it when we see the English articles. There isn’t really any media coverage of whether resident foreigners will be included, except for the odd brush-off that the details are still being worked out (as in the article you posted, IIRC).
(iii) It gets approved by the legislature and final details are announced. Surprise! It’s only for citizens and maybe a very small minority of foreigners. The rest of us can fuck right off.
(iv) A few of us grumble about it a bit more and then forget about it until next time, perhaps with a bit of lingering negative sentiment about Taiwan and a sense of wanting to underdeclare their income/avoid taxes in the future for those of us able to do so.
(v) Taiwanese spend their free money.
They are just subsidies to the weapons manufacturers, but subsides are not aloud so they call it a grant to the buyer. It’s not like they can use the money to buy French submarines.
I think a similar system was used with the 50 apache helicopter the uk just got or it may have been the F35s.
Maybe…but that would imply more consideration of foreigners than probably exists. I suspect it’s simply unfathomable to many of those organizing the scheme that tax-paying resident foreigners would even expect to be included.
It would be nice to see more of us complaining on these English articles though. I’ve made a couple of comments on Facebook etc., but I think most people don’t bother.
Well, I wish they would buy an extra 100 missiles with the money.
What I do not like is knowing so people who pay only a very small fraction of what they owe in taxes and then celebrate when they get money back from the government…including other financial support programs.
Are employers not legally required to send income details to the tax services? Or do you mean if you are tutoring English left and right and getting paid in cash?