The Balance of National Policy between Designing Economic Incentives and Complying with the WTO Rules － the Dilemma for Regulating Economic Incentives in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Yih-Shiuan Lin, 林益萱
• Other Authors: Kwang, Cheng-Hwa
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/ag3es6

碩士 === 中原大學 === 財經法律研究所 === 102 === The market economy in Taiwan is constrained by its limited natural resources and the fact that it is an island. On the other hand, Taiwan, as a member of the WTO, is in a magnificent strategic geographic location with China to its west, Japan and South Korea to its north, and the Philippines and Vietnam to its south. However, Taiwan’s recent economic development has come to a standstill due to internal economic regulations’ failure to be elaborated under the globalization. There are a few factors that may influence the economic trade measures in promoting the development of a national economy, such as subsidies, tariffs, anti-dumping duties, countervailing duties, content rate regulations, safeguards, measures of encouragement of investment and taxation, and so on. Nevertheless, the aforesaid measures are regulated by the ASCM (Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures), GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) and TRIM (Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures) under the WTO framework. The controlling authority has to consider how it will implement the terms of the international agreements when legislating national economic regulations. As a result of this, the internal economic regulations and norms vary from country to country and jurisdictional competition is more of a consideration as well. Enterprises which regard business as their priority can practice regulatory arbitrage. For example, enterprises may be able to find better financing terms by practicing this type of international arbitrage. Enterprises can also either choose the legal public goods that benefit them the most or the limitation of circumvention measures. In the past, enterprises bypassing investment in Mainland China due difference in corporate taxation was a clear example. Taiwan enterprises use the regulatory arbitrage to dodge the legal regulation managed and controlled by the government of Taiwan. They invest offshore companies in the third country through a roundabout approach. The jurisdictional competition has caused corporate charter competition; it derives the competition of national taxing powers as well. Multinational enterprises have created the lowest tax cost via a conglomerate that has established the place of registration in countries with optimal regulations and trade arrangements at the same time. However, this practice has damaged the base of national tax. To secure their taxing powers, various countries have come up with different measures to protect themselves, such as transfer pricing, anti-thin capitalization, and so on. Since some other countries might get involved in this, they have the need to sign tax treaties in order to bring the best result at the end. On the other hand, FTA has increased greatly since 1995; it influences international trade as well. Apart from joining the WTO, the governmental authority should establish a close trade relationship with other countries. It may definitely make the authority more competitive in the future. National economic regulations affect not only the development of industries but the decision making process for enterprises considering if they should stay in Taiwan. It also influences the willingness of foreign enterprises to invest in Taiwan. Excessively yielding economic incentives may consume national resources and cause dispute with other countries. Nonetheless, the economic incentives are not attractive enough for other enterprise but they are not competitive either. The balance of enterprise profit, national benefit, and international economic harmony is a critical economic issue going forward.