The Fiscal Information Agency (FIA), Ministry of Finance announced that the 2019 statistical book of assessed individual income tax filing data is scheduled to be made public on 29 June 2021. The electronic version of the statistical tables in the statistical book is also made available on the Fiscal Information Agency website (https://www.fia.gov.tw/Public Service/Statistics/National Tax). The public is welcome to browse and download it from the website.
The FIA would like to emphasize that the data in the statistical book is calculated according to assessed Individual Income Tax Filing data. Because it does not include the income of taxpayers from “government transfer expenses” (such as government subsidies), tax-free income and separate taxation, etc., the statistical book is not to be directly used as a basis for measuring the national income or the wealth gap. For relevant household income data, the information published by the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS), Executive Yuan shall prevail. In addition, according to the “Report on the Survey of Family Income and Expenditure” published by the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS), Executive Yuan, international data is collected mainly through sample surveys of household income and often uses the Gini coefficient as an indicator to measure the degree of income inequality of all households. In 2019, the Gini coefficient per household in Taiwan was 0.339, which was lower than the international warning level of “0.4”. In addition, the Gini coefficient per capita in 2019 was 0.276, which is also lower than that of many countries.
The FIA specifically stated that starting from 2019, the calculation method of the Salary Income has adopted fixed Special Deduction or Necessary Expenses Deduction. The presentation and content of some statistical tables has changed, and it is not suitable for time series comparison analysis.
News Contact person: Miss Lin, Deputy Director of National Taxes Division, FIA
Contact number: (02) 27631833 #1219
Annex: Income Distribution in Selected Countries