The tax case of Tai Ji Men offers evidence that both transitional justice and anti-corruption measures in Taiwan still have serious flaws.
by Cheng-An Tsai*
*A paper presented at the International Society for the Sociology of Religion 37th Conference, Taipei, Taiwan, 4–7 July 2023.
Tai Ji Men is an ancient qigong, martial arts, spiritual self-cultivation menpai in which the concepts of love, peace, and conscience are spread around the world through cultural activities. According to the law, the Zhang-men-ren (Grand Master), Dr. Hong, established the Tai Ji Men Qigong Academy in 1966. My paper discusses the Tai Ji Men tax case, which has attracted widespread attention in Taiwan and internationally. In the past 57 years, there has never been a tax problem for Tai Ji Men. Why was there a tax problem between 1991 and 1996?
Before 1987, Taiwan was an authoritarian state, and FoRB was not fully guaranteed. Taiwan did not gradually move from an authoritarian to a post-authoritarian system until July 15, 1987, when martial law was lifted. The Tai Ji Men case, which occurred in 1996, was a human rights violation in which the post-authoritarian Kuomintang government targeted FoRB and cracked down on several religious movements. The Taiwan government’s persecution of religious freedom and human rights at the period was unjust. The Control Yuan listed this human rights persecution case as a serious human rights violation in 2005.
On July 13, 2007, the criminal case against the Tai Ji Men started in 1996 was resolved by the Supreme Court. The defendants were declared innocent of all charges, including tax evasion, and indemnified for unlawful imprisonment by the state. Unjust tax bills concerning five fiscal years arising from the criminal case have been redressed. Only the case for the year 1992 is still unresolved, although substantially it is not different from the other years. In 2020, government officials were still imposing taxes and fines for the 1992 tax bill, and illegally auctioning off the Zhang-men-ren, Dr. Hong’s, assets.
In 2023, Taiwan was selected as the host country of the IRF Forum on Human Rights and Freedom of Religion or Belief, which shows that Taiwan’s performance in human rights, democracy and freedom has been recognized internationally. However, at the IRF Summit forum held in Washington DC for three consecutive years, the Tai Ji Men human rights case was discussed by many international scholars and experts. They pointed out that if the legacy of persecution of human rights during the authoritarian period persists, as the Tai Ji Men case demonstrates, it will affect Taiwan’s international image.
Why is there such illogic violation of transitional justice principles? Taiwan still bears the effects of authoritarianism, is my response.
For many years, Taiwan has been governed by an authoritarian regime. During the period of transition, the old ideas and behaviors of the authoritarian regime continue to exist, and bureaucrats with old habits continue to occupy various positions in the free and democratic system, forming a post-authoritarian government that still exists today. My evaluation is as follows.
1. Negotiated Transitional Justice
For many years, the United Nations has worked hard to promote transitional justice, and Taiwan’s newly elected democracy government has also taken some measures to implement transitional justice. But the type of transitional justice prevailing in Taiwan has been called “negotiated transition in theory only,” or “self-castrating transitional justice.” During democratic transitions, authoritarian political parties that remain in power usually agree or tacitly agree to limit reforms to certain areas. When this happens, transitional justice can only be implemented within a certain range.
For example, the Kuomintang (KMT) government passed the “Regulations on Restoration of People’s Damaged Rights During the Martial Law Period” in 1995. This law only covered events that happened between May 20, 1949 and July 14, 1987. Both the “February 28 Incident Handling and Compensation Regulations” in 1995 and the “Regulations on Compensation for Inappropriate Rebellion and Espionage Trial Cases During the Martial Law Period” in 1998 are about compensation.
The “Improper Property Regulations” in 2016 and the “Transitional Justice Promotion Act” in 2017 were passed by the Democratic Progressive Party government. However, they only cover the time period from 1945 to 1992, when the KMT was in power. This means they do not cover the rights of those who were persecuted and whose human rights were violated after 1992, thus ignoring fundamental needs of transitional justice. It is a typical example of limiting the scope of transitional justice.
The lingering poison of authoritarianism led to Taiwan’s self-castrating, negotiated transformation, which is far from being able to provide a full way to fix historical wrongs through traditional transitional justice. The case of the Tai Ji Men Zhang-men-ren and dizi (disciples) being hurt in their human rights was also left out of the transitional justice resolution process.
2. New Legal and Tax Bureaucratic Authoritarian Regimes
After many political transitions in Taiwan, the problem of the government breaking people’s rights has not gotten enough attention. Instead, after the ruling party said they had achieved a formally democratic majority, they built a new “democratic legitimacy” discourse, which put Taiwan in a new situation with the danger of an authoritarian bureaucracy. Since 1992, especially, Taiwan’s legal and tax bureaucracy authoritarianism set up by administrative courts and fiscal and taxation administrative agencies still keeps in itself the poison of an authoritarian system, which continues to hurt basic human rights and slow down social progress.
Evidence of the authoritarian system of legal and tax bureaucrats is as follows:
(a) More than 9,500 clarification orders from the Ministry of Finance dominate taxation administration. Interpretation orders are beyond the law. Executive power is greater than legislative power, seriously violating the legal principle of taxation. The Legislative Yuan has no room for interpretation orders.
(b) Most of the judges in administrative court do not have good understanding of tax law, rendering more than 94% of rulings in favor of tax authorities, or they support the National Taxation Bureau (NTB)’s authoritarian mentality of “paying some, more or less.” When 6 % of the citizens win their lawsuits, their tax bills are not directly revoked, but are returned to the NTB for “further legal consideration,” which gives the NTB the right to issue a new tax bill, and people cannot obtain effective judicial relief.
(c) The Ministry of Finance and its affiliated tax authorities, in addition to citing laws and regulations, also use explanation letters to frequently make interpretations that are not conducive to the rights and interests of the public. Especially under the cooperation of the Legislative Yuan with the administrative agencies, tax rewards given to tax officials and the encouragement of financial and tax authorities to exceed the standard, strict taxation, as well as excessive taxation, have become the collective subconsciousness of tax collectors and the root cause of human rights violations.
These are the old ideas and old ways of doing things from the authoritarian system. They let Taiwan have a free and democratic system on paper, but there are still poisons left over from the authoritarian system. The revenue bureau’s technocrats follow the well-known instrumental rules for figuring out what letters and orders mean, putting an emphasis on administrative control and authoritative configuration.
3. Anti-corruption Under Authoritarian Legacy
Human rights and democracy are goals that everyone agrees on, and corruption is a bad habit that everyone condemns. The United Nations General Assembly passed the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) on October 31, 2003. Its main idea is to “pay attention to the seriousness of the problems and threats that corruption poses to social stability and security, to democratic institutions and values, to morality and justice, and to sustainable development and the rule of law.” It had a total of 177 contracting states as of 2022.
Corruption is caused by a simple equation: corruption is equal to monopoly power and discretionary power, without transparency and responsibility. Civil workers are the only ones who can carry out public power. If they have a lot of discretion, information in the bureaucratic system is not clear, and there is no one to blame if they do not follow the rules. This is an important cause of corruption. Corruption is directly related to how centralized the government is.
The United States and Taiwan signed the “Taiwan-US 21st Century Trade Initiative” on June 1, 2013. The fourth part of this agreement is “anti-corruption,” which means that both countries will work together to fight and stop bribery and corruption that affects international trade and business.
Obviously, the Taiwan government attaches great importance to anti-corruption.
Nonetheless, I must point out that the Taiwanese government’s anti-corruption policies and measures have significant blind spots and flaws, and have not undergone a comprehensive review and reform based on the corruption formula’s central concept. Specifically, government agencies should avoid excessive discretion, increase transparency, and bolster the accountability mechanism, all of which are deficient. Minister Su Jian-Rong stated on April 25, 2022, when the Ministry of Finance’s Integrity Conference Report was held, that “the chief executives and supervisors should uphold a zero-tolerance attitude towards corruption, actively cooperate with the policies of the Executive Yuan, and promote various important policies and clean government work to respond to the needs of the public, and increase the people’s understanding and trust in the affairs of the Ministry.” In reality, however, the Ministry of Finance has issued more than 9,500 interpretation letters and has a considerable amount of discretion. This is a significant cause of corruption. Moreover, neither of the two national reports for the two main United Nations Covenants underwent review or enhancement.
One possible reason for the above results is that Taiwan’s elite is still influenced by the poison of authoritarianism. This leads to inconsistencies in attitudes and actions, as well as the “power poison phenomenon of the ruling elite,” which encourages the use of formal legality to cover illegal practices or even the most sneaky, evil, and corrupt ways of doing wrong.
How a country’s government works has a large part in predicting what kind of risk of corruption it is exposed to. It is the idea about how to run an organization that leads to corruption. Classical rationality and organizational structure are two of the most important tools to measure corruption in organizations.
The classical rational theory of corruption points out that people are self-interested and self-centered. Rational choice theory emphasizes that corruption crimes are a balance between benefits and damages. If there are enough ways to hold people accountable for their actions, they will weigh the pros and cons and give up crime. Where there are rewards for corruption, there are corrupt practices. Take incentives for tax bureaucrats from the Ministry of Finance and executive success bonuses from the Ministry of Justice’s Enforcement Agency as examples. Theoretically, these are ways to encourage civil workers who work for the government to do their jobs well. However, they are put into place without a full system for holding people accountable. This is a common way for the law to cover up wrongdoing or allow corruption.
The organizational structure theory of corruption posits that people in a group hope to get “social acceptance” and will try to survive and work with others. Because of these things, they have to accept the “spoils” of their crooked coworkers, which leads to their own corruption. Take the tax incentives in Taiwan’s Ministry of Finance as an example. They stress that there are no individual bonuses, only group bonuses. Isn’t it exactly the thinking behind building a corrupt organization and a perfect example of the “corrupt organizational structure theory”? Also, the Administrative Enforcement Agency of Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice’s rewards for performance evaluation spell out in detail how to figure out individual bonuses and group bonuses. From the point of view of how corruption is organized, it makes no sense to give promotions to civil workers who use monopoly public power to commit corruption. So, it is a sign of immorality and a violation of human rights when agents (civil workers) are influenced by bonuses to act in their own private interest.
The preceding discussions of “Negotiated Transitional Justice,” “New Legal and Tax Bureaucratic Authoritarian Regimes,” and “Anti-corruption under Authoritarian Legacies” demonstrate that Taiwan still carries the residual toxins of authoritarianism. If the legacy of the persecution of human rights during the authoritarian period persists and the Tai Ji Men human rights case is not completely resolved, it will not only have a negative impact on Taiwan’s international image, but it will also demonstrate that Taiwan is not an advanced democratic nation governed by the rule of law and human rights, including in the field of freedom of religion or belief.
Source: Bitter Winter