Taiwan, China to sign taxation, air safety agreements (update)
Taipei, Aug. 18 (CNA) Taiwan and China will sign two agreements on taxation and aviation safety in their next high-level meeting to be held in Fuzhou, China later this month, a senior official of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) announced Tuesday.
The meeting between the chiefs of Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and China’s Association of Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) will take place Aug. 24-26, said deputy MAC chief Lin Chu-chia (林祖嘉).
Sung Hsiu-ling (宋秀玲), director general of the Ministry of Finance’s Department of International Fiscal Affairs, said the taxation pact will help Taiwanese businesses avoid double taxation.
Under the pact, businesses in specific industries, such as logistics and construction, will also be exempted from income tax during certain time periods, Sung said.
After signing the taxation pact with China, Sung said Taiwan can expect to sign more taxation agreements with other countries in the future.
Taiwan currently has 28 taxation agreements, including those with 13 European countries. In the Asia-Pacific region, it has such agreements with India, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.
“In the future we may expand toward northeast Asia,” Sung said.
The two pacts are scheduled to be signed by SEF Chairman Lin Join- sane (林中森) and ARATS President Chen Deming (陳德銘) Aug. 25, according to a statement issued by SEF Monday.
Meanwhile, ahead of next week’s high-level meeting, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said it is opposed to allowing cross-strait flights over the median line of the Taiwan Strait – something that the Chinese side has been demanding.
The ministry’s opposition is out of national security concerns, Defense Ministry spokesman Lou Shou-he (羅紹和) said at a regular press conference on Tuesday.
Taiwan has requested that China allow more of its travelers to make transit stops in Taiwan en route to other countries, but China has insisted on linking the issue with the opening of the cross-strait median to air traffic.
