Growing share of Taiwanese tax dependents are elderly: Ministry

In a sign of Taiwan’s aging population, the proportion of tax dependents over age 70 has risen by 8.2 percentage points over the past 10 years, the Ministry of Finance (MOF) said Thursday.

In a report on trends in Taiwan’s consolidated income tax revenues, the MOF’s Department of Statistics said income tax revenues had reached record highs each year since 2021, rising to NT$873.7 billion (US$26.8 billion) in 2025.

The report attributed the steady increase to higher salaries, stock market gains and rising interest rates.

Caregivers push elderly people in wheelchairs at a park in Taipei in an undated photograph.

Photo: Taipei Times

Overall, consolidated income tax revenue accounted for 23.1 percent of Taiwan’s total tax revenue last year, compared with 30.1 percent in Japan, 28.8 percent in South Korea and 18.3 percent in Singapore, the ministry said.

Following Taiwan’s 2018 tax reforms, the proportion of income tax-exempt households rose considerably. By 2024, 45.3 percent of tax filings, or 3.17 million tax-filing units, were not required to pay any income tax, the report said.

Meanwhile, the top 20 percent of earners accounted for 60 percent of all income earned in 2024, but 97 percent of the total income tax burden, the report said.

More single filers, elderly dependents

The MOF highlighted increases in both the proportion of single tax filers and filers with elderly dependents. These trends reflect a growing proportion of people remaining unmarried, smaller household sizes and an aging population, the ministry said.

In 2024, single-person tax filings reached a record high of 57.4 percent of the total, while 8 in 10 new tax filing households were single individuals with no dependents, the report said.

Meanwhile, the proportion of claimed dependents who are over 70 years old climbed to 27 percent in 2024 -- a rise of 8.2 percentage points over the previous decade -- while the share of dependents under age 18 fell to 37 percent, the ministry said.

In financial terms, this meant that the number of households claiming the special deduction for long-term care, and the total amount claimed, exceeded 400,000 households and NT$51.8 billion, respectively, both record highs, the MOF said.

That year, the total amount claimed under the special deduction for preschool children exceeded NT$100 billion, showing the government is committed to both long-term care needs and easing the burden on families with young children, the ministry said.