Secondly, to force the owners

of extra houses to release their

houses and resolve the problems

brought by the reduction of estate

and gift tax, the government has

proposed implement extra house

tax(囤房稅). As the regulation of

property tax mentioned above, in

2004, the Ministry of Finance

(財務部) imposed that the tax rate of

property tax is 1.2 or around 1.5 to

3.6 percent. To illustrate, if a citizen

possesses houses which are used by

him in person, his spouse, or his

lineal relatives as dwelling, the tax

rate of houses will be 1.2 percent.

Besides, if the houses are rented

out, the landlord of excessive houses can pay the tax with the tax rate of 1.2 percent as well. As for those citizens who have excessive houses which are not rented out or used by him in person, his spouse, or lineal relatives as dwelling, they have to pay for 1.5 to 3.6 percentage of property tax which is leaved to local government to adjust. The higher tax rate towards extra houses ranging from 1.5 to 3.6 percent is so-called extra house tax (extra house tax by the government, picture 3). The intention of this policy is to make use of the higher taxation to force the owners with excessive empty houses to release their houses. However, most of the local governments don’t adjust the taxation towards the owners of extra empty houses. They evenly impose 1.5 taxation on every extra house. There are only three local governments that have elevated the taxation of extra houses. As a result, the cost of possessing extra houses is still too low to threaten the people who keep extra houses deliberately. In an interview reported by TVBS無線衛星電視台 (2019), Peng Yang Kai彭揚凱, who is the secretary-general of OURs專業者都市改革組織,  once said, “I can assure you that property tax is certainly cheaper than vehicle license tax牌照稅 and fuel tax燃料稅 that you pay annually for caring a car.” Peng indicates that most of                                                                                             the people would rather keeping extra                                                                                              houses under low taxation than selling                                                                                              or renting out their houses with lower                                                                                              prices. To improve the policy, New                                                                                                    Power Party時代力量 brought up a                                                                                                    proposal. The members of the party                                                                                                  suggest that the government should                                                                                                  lower the tax rate of the owner’s first                                                                                                house from 1.2 into 1 percent and                                                                                                      regulate the tax rate for the second or                                                                                                third houses to be 1.2 percent. As for                                                                                                those people who have more than four                                                                                              houses, unless they can approve these                                                                                              houses are rented out or for dwelling                                                                                                purpose, their tax rate of extra house                                                                                                tax will be ascended from 2.4 to 10 percent gradually and respectively (extra house tax by New Power Party, picture 4). However, lowering the tax rate of taxation for people who have one house means to cut down the major financial resource of local government. According to the statistics provided by Financial Information Agency of Ministry of Finance財政部財政資訊中心 (2018), people who have one house needs to pay 38.28 percent of national property tax. In other words, if the proposal passes, the local government will definitely lose a huge amount of financial income. Besides, as a matter of fact, it’s difficult for the government to identify whether the house is correspondent to the qualification of 1 percent of tax rate. The owners of houses can register their houses under other people’s name and pretend to be qualified to have one percent of tax rate. Additionally, numerous people possess extra houses unwillingly. Although they want to sell or rent out the houses, they can’t sell or rent the houses out because of bad location or lack of renovation. Moreover, the elevation of tax rate will be highly possible to cause the elevation of rent or house prices which is against the intention of lowering house prices. Based on my survey result, 82 percent of participants think it is inevitable that the elevation of house tax will definitely cause rents or house prices to ascend. In short, according to the reasons above, although New Power Party proposed an amendment to this policy, the extra house tax is still with defects.