萬國法律事務所

It has been advocated by the Tax Reform Alliance that the protection of tax payer’s rights and interests should be enhanced, particularly as the success rate in tax payers’ challenges against administrative decisions by administrative remedial procedures is relatively low. In response to such advocacy, on November 25, 2009, the Finance Committee of the Legislative Yuan decided to add the “Tax Payer Protection Chapter” to the Tax Collection Law.

According to the Tax Payer Protection Chapter, the Ministry of Finance or other government agencies can only impose tax obligations on people in accordance with a statute through the legislative process, rather than any administrative order or administrative decrees. Furthermore, evidence based on which tax is collected or even the taxpayers’ confession can only be obtained under due process of law. Before administrative decisions concerning tax collection will be imposed, tax payers shall be given opportunities to state their opinions.

The Tax Payer Protection Chapter also addresses the problem of businesses being excessively fined for failure to obtain, preserve or issue invoices in accordance with relevant laws and regulations. Statistics show that ninety percent of the fines imposed on businesses in violation of such legal regulations exceeded one million NT dollars. An extremely severe fine of one hundred million NT dollars was once imposed on businesses that failed to issue invoices pursuant to the law. Some businesses have even gone bankrupt due to such excessive fines. A maximum amount of fine not exceeding one million NT dollars has thus been added into the Tax Payer Protection Chapter in order to protect businesses from excessive penalty imposed by the government.

In addition, the two amendments especially onerous to tax payers proposed by the Ministry of Finance that limited tax payers’ rights have been rejected by the Finance Committee of the Legislative Yuan. One of these proposed amendments provided that an overdue fine could be imposed in case of late payment of fines, and the other provided that a security deposit of half of the amount of the fine imposed would have had to have been paid in advance before the end of the administrative remedial procedure.