Taipei City Mayor Hau Long-bin on Saturday expressed his intention to reform the city's housing taxation system. With Taipei city government scheduled to levy luxury house tax in July, Hau said that the administration's next step is to propose a new tax plan on houses in October, which is expected to lower the rate on old buildings.

Taipei City, which is filled with many luxury homes, will start taxing them this July.

Homes that are classified as luxury homes will be taxed 3 times more than what they are taxed now.

In order to make home tax and rental tax fair, the city government has decided to lower the tax on old homes.

The Department of Finance said current tax schemes on homes haven't been changed in 30 years, creating an unfair system.

For example, a home worth NT$10 million will have NT$6.24 million in residual value after 52 years of use and using a depreciation of 37.6%. This is far from reality and cause owners of old homes to pay more in taxes.

Thus, there is a need to change the tax scheme on old homes.

But, how to determine which homes are old? Do you increase the depreciation rate to lower the home tax?

This still needs to be discussed.

The city government has budgeted NT$2.2 million to study this new scheme.

A new tax policy is expected to be proposed by this Oct. and will take place within 3 years.