New Power Party proposes higher business tax, minimum wage law

Taipei, Aug. 31 (CNA) The New Power Party (時代力量) said Monday that it will work toward raising the corporate income tax rate and setting up a specific law targeting minimum wage in Taiwan if its candidates are elected in next year's legislative elections.

"We hope to gradually abolish the unreasonable corporate tax relief and levy business income tax on their gains," legislative candidate Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said at a press conference in which his relatively new party announced several of its social and economic policies.

Among them is a proposal to raise corporate income tax from its current rate of 17 percent to 20-25 percent.

Taiwan lowered the business income tax rate from 20 percent to 17 percent in 2010, at which time the government said it would enhance Taiwan's competitiveness and attract more foreign investment.

Huang argued that while the "trickle-down economics" approach has brought economic growth to Taiwan over the past few years, it has also led to increasingly unequal distribution of wealth.

"This is what Taiwan society is facing right now, and a problem that both the ruling and opposition parties cannot sidestep," said Huang, who was a key figure in the Sunflower Movement of last year.

The party also proposed increasing the luxury, inheritance and gift taxes, levying a carbon tax, banning government agencies from employing dispatch workers, lowering the income replacement ratio of retired civil servants and establishing a specific minimum wage law.

Hung Tzu-yung (洪慈庸), another of the party's legislative candidates, said a specific minimum wage law is imperative in ensuring that minimum wage reviews are open and transparent, and that workers earn what they need to survive and support their families.

The New Power Party was established in January this year. It advocates such issues as the normalization of Taiwan's status as a nation.

(By Christie Chen)ENDITEM/J