Close to 50% Have Yet to File Taxes; Deadline is 5/31|報稅週四截止 近半民眾未報稅

Thursday May 31 is the last day to file taxes, but 2.75 million people, or close to one-half of the tax payers, have not yet paid.


In theory, filing taxes online should be quick and easy. The Ministry of Finance previously guaranteed there would be no issues with filing online this year like there were last year, but this has not been the case.

The system crashed at the very beginning. I had to wait a long time, like 15 or 20 minutes, (for the system to get back online). (How long did it take you to file your taxes in the end?) Almost an hour.

The government's entire tax filing system crashed spectacularly on May 1 last year and the ministry has been trying to fix and upgrade the system ever since. However, many people are still unable to file online this year. As of the 21st, 3.46 million taxpaying households, or 55.7 percent, had already filed. The remaining 2.75 million taxpaying households have yet to file. An estimated 3.04 of the 3.46 million households that have already filed filed online.

We control our network bandwidth. If there are problems -- there would have appeared on May 1. The problems now were caused by people's individual computer settings and errors on their part. It had nothing to do with our program.

The ministry blames firewalls and antivirus software for people being unable to file online. It also says waiting until the last day to file is a bad idea because it would be peak filing time and it'd be best if people didn't wait until the last day.