Taoyuan Nights

I previously commented about Taiwan’s tax take; suggesting it is likely to plummet while expenditure rockets.

The numbers are in: almost a 20% fall in tax received between January and May this year. This is despite stimulus spending that should have increased short-term taxable corporate income. Intriguingly, the article mentions that this kind of ‘tax shock’ is not a first for Taiwan, it happened previously during the dotcom blowout as well.

Taiwan’s biggest semiconductor producer, TSMC, claims things are getting better.

Meanwhile, Taiwan’s stock markets took a pretty sharp plummet over the last two days. This isn’t very surprising, the TAIEX has been rocketing up for a while now despite rather gloomy export numbers and increasingly worrying unemployment data.