The Fiscal Information Agency (FIA), Ministry of Finance announced that the 2020 statistical book of assessed individual income tax filing data is made public today. The electronic version of the statistical tables in the statistical book is also available on the Fiscal Information Agency website (https://www.fia.gov.tw). The public is welcome to browse and download it from the website; please follow the steps to access: FIA Page > Public Service > Statistics > National Tax.

        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 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 2020, the Gini coefficient per household in Taiwan was 0.340, which was lower than the international warning level of “0.4”. In addition, the Gini coefficient per capita in 2020 was 0.274, which is also lower than that of many countries.

        The FIA specifically states 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: Mr. Yang, Section Chief of National Taxes Division, FIA
Contact number: (02) 27631833 #1211
Annex: Income Distribution in Selected Countries