When facing the influences of factors including the flourishing of newly developing countries, the forming of regional economy and trade, the changing of industrial structures in Taiwan, the rising of environmental consciousness, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in our country are extremely urgent to advance their competitiveness. To efficiently and effectively assist the developing of SMEs, however, government institutions have to increase their administrative efficiency and have to amend relevant laws and decrees. Besides, since 21st century, governments in developed countries, such as USA, UK, New Zealand, Japan, and Singapore, all have dedicated to government reengineering to strengthen their governmental competitiveness, forming a movement of “government reengineering” in the world. Also, our country has proposed plans of organization reengineering to face challenges accompanied with globalization. Therefore, based on the draft administrative recommendations, the legal structure, and the content of relevant regulations, this research continues “A Study on the Administrative Action Law for the Development of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises” in 2006 and plans the Amendatory draft for SME Development Statute and the Amendatory draft for Enforcement Rules of SME Development Statute, which divides specific and technical articles, hereby to achieve the goal of explicitly drawing the whole administrative plan and policy objectives.
This research not only examines changes of global economy, excellent and suitable SMEs policies in other countries, and the needs and difficulties of SMEs in Taiwan, but also refers to the conclusions made in “Conference on Sustainable Development of Economy” and “Conference on Nation-Wide SMEs” and the industrial missions and positions proposed by Department of Commerce and Industrial Development Bureau.
Moreover, This research also considers the “Plan for Fiscal Reform” proposed by Ministry of Finance and the “The New Tripartite Industry Bills” proposed by Industrial Development Bureau in order to cope with the expiration of “Statute for upgrading industries”. Accordingly, this research proposes the overall vision for SME policies: “to create advantages, to sustain development, to innovate lively, and to embrace the Globe” and the five strategies used to achieve the vision. We also view enterprise, innovation, and capability to earn foreign exchange through exports as main policies and hope to create a blueprint of new generation for SMEs in the future 10 years. Therefore, the main points of the amendatory protocol of SME Development Statute include seven items, such as setting up the minimum budget for R&D and assisting SMEs, strengthening the modifiability of regulations for SMEs, assisting the reconstruction and revival of SMEs, accelerating the formation of industry settlement, prompting the development of SME Incubation Centers, identifying policy purposes clearly, and establishing excellent tax and legal environment. These items not only response to the suggestions of administrative drafts of “A Study on the Administrative Action Law for the Development of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises” in 2006, but also fit the six main policies in he administration’s three-pronged push to give attention to the needs of Taiwan’s central and southern regions, of the nation’s middle-and low-income groups, and of small and medium-sized enterprises.
According to the study above, this research suggests that modifications of 44 articles in the SME Development Statute be made—Chapter One: General Principle; Chapter Two: Investment, Finance, and Assurance; Chapter Tree: Operation and Management; Chapter Fourth: Exemption of Taxes and Fines; Chapter Five: Enterprise incubation; and Chapter Six: Supplementary Provisions.
Some modifications of 16 articles in the Enforcement Rules of SME Development Statute also should be made—Chapter One: General Principal; Chapter Two: Finance and Assurance; Chapter Three: Operation and Management; Chapter Four: Supplementary Provisions. We hope to establish a quality law and order environment, let SMEs contribute to the economical development of our country continuously, and strengthen their competitiveness in global market.
Besides, this research also lists relevant regulations that the government can follow to promote affairs and shoot for budgets in order to cope with changes, caused by government reengineering, in organizations and affairs.
In addition, the project in this year also incorporates the assessment of the impacts of the proposed law, which makes a general consideration to the “necessity”, “effectiveness”, and “cost-benefit analysis”, and the results show that the amendment of the SME Development Statute is necessary. Furthermore, executing this project also meets the requirement of the assessment of the impacts of the proposed law. Finally, another main point of this project is to finish and hand over the report of tax expenditures in the chapter of SME incubation to Ministry of Finance.
In this report, this research estimates that the loses in exempting land value tax and house tax for city and county governments by agreeing colleges or research institutions to set up incubation centers and the benefits in doing so are NT$6,515,000 and NT$24,092,900 respectively. According to the estimation, tax income benefits are obviously greater than tax income loses. Because land value tax and house tax are county/city taxes, the tax-free policy will bring positive fiscal benefits to county and city governments.