萬國法律事務所

On 10 December 2010, Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan passed the third reading of the draft bill to amend the Public Assistance Act. In addition to raising the poverty line, a new category of “medium-low income household” is added for health insurance fees and tuition and miscellaneous fees subsidies. The amendments will come into effect on 1 July 2011.

The new category of “medium-low income household” will allow more than 183,000 households (536,000 persons) to be fully subsidized by the government for health insurance fees. For example, in a household of four with two children studying in private college, the health insurance fees subsidized equal NT$ 330 per person per month. The subsidy ratio for tuition and miscellaneous fees is determined by the Ministry of Education, but for each month expenses will be reduced by at least NT$ 1,000. To qualify as “medium-low income household”, the family’s income must be lower than 1.5 times the local minimum cost of living, but not be low enough to meet the threshold for a low-income household.

When calculating the total household income and assets, land without any economic benefit, locations designated as pending contamination remediation and part-time work income of student aged 25 years and less, are also excluded. The income of unemployed persons who are able to work and of persons with no work income on record will be deemed and recognized based on certain average salary standards. Only persons who are determined to be unemployed by public employment service agencies will be listed as persons without income. When determining the members of a household, siblings, foreign spouses without household registration, minor children of single parent families without custody and not supported, will be excluded.

The Ministry of the Interior preliminarily assessed that under the adjusted poverty line, an additional 21,000 households (54,000 persons) will qualify as low-income households and with the additional medium-low income households, the budget required for public assistance will be increased by another NT$ 5.1 billion.