30-Second Summary: Every person in Taiwan has done this: receiving a thin invoice at checkout and slipping it into their pocket, or having it directly stored on a mobile device. Few people have considered that this paper simultaneously does three things: it is proof of transaction, it is a free lottery ticket, and it informs the state whether the business was honestly reported. This design—"turning all citizens into tax inspectors"—was initiated in 1951 by Finance Director Ren Hsien-ch'un, leading to a seventy-five percent surge in tax revenue within one year, and has been operating for over seventy years. Its secret for seven decades is turning "taking the invoice" into an unconscious reflex.
Three Things That Paper In Your Hand Does
At the checkout counter of a convenience store, the clerk asks a question that hardly needs answering: "Do you want to load it [onto a mobile device]?" You scan the barcode on your phone or shake your head and take a thin slip still warm from the thermal paper. The whole action takes less than three seconds; you don't even look down at it.
A Unified Invoice receipt from 2007. That eight-digit number is the proof for citizens to play every two months. Photo: Solomon203 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0_
But that paper does three things simultaneously. It is a receipt, proving the transaction occurred. It is a lottery ticket; drawn on the 25th of every month twice a year, matching the last three digits wins a small prize redeemable at a convenience store, and winning the grand prize requires another trip to the bank1. It is also a report submitted to the state, telling the tax authorities that this store indeed recorded and reported this business2.
Some people put them in their wallets or toss them into the small box next to the cash register, piling them up in drawers, waiting for the bi-monthly draw to win two hundred dollars by matching the last three digits. Most Taiwanese people repeat this action tens of thousands of times in a lifetime, yet rarely wonder: why would buying something result in a piece of paper worth ten million? This phenomenon does not exist in the vast majority of places in the world. When foreigners first hear "your receipt might win ten million," their reaction is often to freeze, then regret having thrown the invoice in the trash bin.
Older generations remember guarding the television on draw day, watching the numbers spin out one by one. But how much of that collective memory of the TV drawing is real is difficult to verify today: the historical materials of Unified Invoices compiled by the Ministry of Finance contain no words from those hosts or programs, merely mentioning in passing "using variety shows to enhance promotional effects." The only thing that has truly never been broken is the action itself—"reaching out for the invoice."
💡 Did You Know
Every line of a batch of invoices secretly hides an "inside joke" from the Ministry of Finance printing plant, usually involving intentionally misspelled or omitted characters, and each batch is different. In January and February 2019, the character for 'silver' on the cash register was missing a stroke; in March and April, the character for 'ticket' was missing a stroke. This is a visible anti-counterfeiting design, and some people online specialize in "nitpicking" these invoices. Interestingly, the Ministry of Finance printing plant's official website does not explicitly state this mechanism; it was verified only through cross-media corroboration by investigative personnel interviewed by Central News Agency and records from TVBS3.
How was this convenient reflex designed? The answer lies more than seventy years ago, on an island standing at the edge of a fiscal cliff.
A Seventy-Five Percent Tax Surge Driven by Incentive on a Fiscal Cliff
In 1950, Taiwan was running out of money. The Kuomintang government had just retreated to Taiwan; American aid was intermittent, hyperinflation turned banknotes into waste paper, and small eateries and general stores conducted small cash transactions without issuing receipts or keeping books, creating a tax black hole the government could not collect from.
Where the money would come from was the daily problem Finance Director Ren Hsien-ch'un faced. He was only thirty-eight years old that year. The solution he devised was counterintuitive: instead of dispatching more tax inspectors to patrol the streets, he chose to exploit human greed.
A university graduation photo of Ren Hsien-ch'un, taken in 1933. Seventeen years later, he printed a set of lottery numbers onto receipts across all of Taiwan. Photo: Chizhi Yearbook Issue 8 / Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain_
At the end of 1950, the Provincial Government of Taiwan issued two regulations, which officially came into effect on New Year's Day of the following year: from then on, every Unified Invoice issued by a store would print a set of numbers that could be used for lotteries4. The government effectively outsourced the inspection work to consumers across the island: you naturally ask the owner for an invoice because of the free lottery ticket. The owner keeps the business recorded because they gave you the invoice. The Ministry of Finance's own records state plainly: in that year, operating tax revenue totaled over fifty-one million NTD, an increase of seventy-five percent compared to the two ninety million NTD of the previous year2. One incentive increased tax revenue by seventy-five percent in one year.
Early invoices did not even conduct their own draws; they directly used the special prize numbers from the Patriotic Lottery. These two designs—"governance based on the dream of getting rich"—were twin creations of Ren Hsien-ch'un during the same period2. Later, for promotion, the Ministry of Finance also composed a catchy promotional song[^1c]:
Invoices are great and patriotic prizes, if the boss doesn't issue it, the law will be ashamed.
These four short lines captured both faces of this paper: one side was the sweetness of "patriotic prize," and the other was the threat of "if the boss doesn't issue it, the law will be ashamed." In that era, the paper carried more than just tax matters. Flipping through official English historical materials from the Ministry of Finance reveals that Unified Invoices in the 1950s often printed slogans such as "Reclaim Mainland and Destroy the Communists Party"5. Every receipt received at checkout carried an ideological message from the nation. From its first day, it was both smart behavioral economics and a hand reaching into daily life by an authoritarian state.
📝 Curator's Note
The "governance based on the dream of getting rich" designed by Ren Hsien-ch'un was actually a pair of twins: one was the Unified Invoice, and the other was the Patriotic Lottery issued at the same time, which initially shared the same winning numbers. The older brother, the Patriotic Lottery, later suffered backlash from the greed it inspired: starting in 1985, people gambled on its last two digits in "Dajiale," leading to rampant display of lottery tickets and social disorder; the government was forced to discontinue it in 1987 after thirty-seven years and one thousand one hundred seventy-one issues6. Both relied on the psychology of chance—one was consumed by gambling culture, the other was domesticated into a daily reflex. The difference might be: the greed associated with invoices can only be redeemed in small amounts, two hundred dollars at a time.
From day one, this paper carried two missions: one as an intelligent incentive engineering, and one as a mobilization medium for an authoritarian state. And the man who designed it soon experienced firsthand what it was like when the national machine he built turned against him.
The Finance Director Was Later Imprisoned by His Own Country
In 1953, Ren Hsien-ch'un resigned from public office and opened a law firm. Two years later, on April 11, 1955, he was arrested by the Provincial Security Command of Taiwan under the charge of "knowing spies but failing to report": his cousin, Ren Fang-hsu, was accused of being a spy, and Ren Hsien-ch'un had guaranteed him without reporting7. This accusation could be fatal in the era of white terror.
There is no definitive consensus on why he was truly imprisoned. Several stories circulate: one says that both Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) and Ren Hsien-ch'un were interested in the opera singer Gu Zheng-qiu, and Ren Hsien-ch'un marrying her made Chiang Ching-kuo perpetually unhappy, leading the secret police to retaliate. Another theory suggests that he was highly valued by Chen Cheng, Chen Yi, and Wu Kuo-chen (吳國楨), making him a target for struggle that needed to be eliminated. A third story claims that while he was Finance Director, he had blocked funding from the National Salvation Corps founded by Chiang Ching-kuo8. None of these accounts hold overwhelming dominance, much like most political cases of that era, where the truth is locked in a drawer without a key.
What is certain is the outcome. He was sentenced to seven years and released on January 13, 1958—earlier than the unsubstantiated 1959 circulating in popular rumor; this date is explicitly written in the official archives of the National Human Rights Memory Bank9. After his release, he stopped engaging in politics, went to Jinshan to farm and make jam, and passed away in 1975.
True exoneration came very slowly. In September 2011, the Compensation Foundation determined that the original verdict lacked evidence and restored his honor; on July 15, 2012, then-President Ma Ying-jeou personally apologized to Ren's family and awarded a certificate of restoration of honor; it was only in May 2019 that the Legislative Yuan Investigation Committee formally announced the revocation of that verdict9. These three stages spanned two administrations—that of Ma Ying-jeou and Tsai Ing-wen—and were separated by eight years.
Here lies the sharpest contrast in the entire story. The system designed by Ren Hsien-ch'un survived the entire martial law period, proceeded into democratic Taiwan, drawing lots regularly without missing a day; yet the man who designed it did not have his innocence officially recognized by this country until forty-four years after his death. The system lived longer than the person—this is the first piece of evidence, and there are more to come.
Source: Ministry of Finance Fiscal Archives, National Human Rights Memory Bank, National Legal Database, Tax Agency of the Ministry of Finance
The Paper Gets Heavier and Heavier, But Inspection Power Never Keeps Up
On April 1, 1986, Taiwan's operating tax changed from the old system to the value-added type, adding another layer of mission to this paper10. From then on, the paper carried an additional task: one side proved you bought something, and the other became proof for corporations to cross-check each other. The invoice issued by upstream manufacturers was the basis for downstream manufacturers to deduct tax amounts; the tax of an entire supply chain was thus linked together. In 1951, the same paper only needed to match one number (whether it would win); after 1986, it also had to match a hidden transaction chain (whether upstream companies issued invoices honestly).
In 1993, this paper gained another identity. The Creation Social Welfare Foundation launched "donate invoice casually, save the vegetative," connecting a small personal pleasure with collective public welfare11. You did not need to spend money; you just threw the un-drawn invoice into the transparent box at the entrance, and if it won, the prize went to the foundation. Over thirty-two years, the invoices thrown in by all Taiwanese people accumulated to over one point seven five billion, earning nearly eighteen ninety million NTD in prizes for Creation, supporting about eight hundred poor vegetative patients; the monthly care cost for each person is fifty to seventy thousand NTD12.
Throwing un-drawn invoices into a temple's donation box is a unique Taiwanese "casual public welfare." Photo: Solomon203 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0_
But this channel of goodwill is slowly drying up along with the digitization of the invoice itself. When the invoice changed from a piece of paper held in hand to a string of numbers stored on a mobile device, the action "casually throwing it into the donation box" disappeared. The invoices received by Creation dropped from over one hundred ten million at its 2008 peak to over forty-one million in 2024, a decrease of sixty percent; in the same year, eighty-four point eight billion electronic invoices were issued across Taiwan, with less than one percent donated to social welfare organizations12.
Yet, the system itself continues to create millionaires. Official figures from the Tax Agency of the Ministry of Finance show six hundred and eight as of 2021; by June 2026, a total of nine hundred fifty-seven people have become millionaires through an invoice13.
It sounds like this "citizen inspection" operates flawlessly, but there is another side to the truth. What truly sustains this system has never been someone proactively reporting tax evasion; it is the reflex of everyone passively reaching out for an invoice because of the lottery ticket. The path of proactive reporting is actually very difficult: according to the Tax Collection Act, the maximum reward for reporting and apprehending tax evasion is twenty percent of the fine, with a limit of four point eight million NTD14, but very few people actually receive it. A self-media account quoting the Taipei City National Taxation Bureau stated that in Taipei City, there are about seven thousand reports annually, with only about six hundred successful claims, a success rate of less than ten percent; a TVBS report from 2017 cited an overall success rate of about twenty percent for all types of reports15.
The two sets of numbers may not be the same population base, but they both point to the same thing: relying on reporting to catch tax evasion is far less effective than imagined. More ironically, one analysis calculated that the prize a reporter can ultimately receive from reporting a one-hundred-dollar underreported invoice is only about one dollar. This system turned two thirty million people into tax inspectors, but if an inspector were to seriously handle a case, their hourly wage would probably not even reach one dollar. Not to mention that a 2008 census cited in a 2012 report indicated that less than ten percent of all street vendors in Taiwan actually paid operating tax16.
Ironically, even the prize money intended for this system is not secure. The budget for invoice prizes is categorized under the Ministry of Finance's "agency commission," which has been cut by the Legislative Yuan almost every year—in twelve years from 2014 to 2025, there was no year where it was zero17.
In 2025, the People's Party group proposed a ten percent reduction, and the Ministry of Finance rarely protested on Facebook, saying this would "rob people of their small pleasures." Professor Chen Kuo-liang from the Political Science Department at National Chengchi University criticized the Ministry of Finance instead: the government's own budget documents had long listed this money as an "obligatory expenditure," yet the Ministry of Finance still treated it as a discretionary agency commission to cut, which is like "a thief shouting that he is chasing thieves." There is always a gap between ideal and reality. These are all old problems. The real new question starts with "who will win," quietly rewritten by a line of code.
A Year When the Official Side Couldn't Explain If It Was Fair
First, let's clarify one thing: the controversy in 2024 was related to a separate lottery run by the Ministry of Finance called "Cloud Tree Fun e-Start Collection," and it is different from the main draw of the bi-monthly Unified Invoice. Over ninety thousand people participated, but four people repeatedly won major prizes like iPhones and iPads18. Some started asking: is this truly random? This controversy remains important because both the Cloud Tree and the main invoice draw rely on the same premise: entrusting "who will win" to a piece of code that no one can see, trusting that the government wrote this code honestly. The manipulation of the Cloud Tree was like a public stress test for this entire logic.
The answers revealed by the investigation struck at the core assumption of the entire system. The lottery program from the handling vendor was not purely random. The official investigation report from the Tax Agency of the Ministry of Finance is technical and honest: the program "increased the weight value of active participants and gave them priority drawing opportunities, adjusted the range for random number generation, and compared this random number with the participant's weight value"19. In plain language, it means: the more diligently you participate, the higher your chance of winning. The "equal opportunity for all" proclaimed by the paper in 1951 was quietly rewritten into a loyalty program through lines of code in the cloud version.
But even the official side is unclear about whether there was a problem. The administrative investigation by the Ministry of Finance and the Tax Agency used the phrasing "still meets the drawing conditions for this activity"; the subsequent judicial investigation transferred to the Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Justice, as reported by the media, simplified it to "no wrongdoing found"20. Between these two stages and two sets of terminology, there is a blurry area. The four people who repeatedly won and caused controversy were initially stated by the Ministry of Finance: the prizes would be temporarily withheld pending investigation results—if the vendor's program was deemed problematic, the prizes would not be awarded; otherwise, they would proceed according to the original drawing results. Since the final investigation did not find any intentional profiteering or list tampering, the premise for awarding the prize was met, and all the National Taxation Bureau could do was file a civil lawsuit against the handling vendor and claim an additional twenty-four million NTD20.
The goodwill channel of "casually donating invoices" also relied on "anti-corruption mechanisms replacing human trust." In 2025, the case involving the Keelung branch of the Creation Foundation was exposed: a volunteer embezzled four thousand forty-five winning invoices donated by the public and claimed over one million NTD in prizes—the North District National Taxation Bureau had noticed this person's unusually high frequency of winning as early as 2020 and reported it to the foundation for investigation21. The foundation later announced that prize redemption would no longer be handled by volunteers, and they promoted the electronic donation code "919" with greater emphasis—even goodwill needed to be digitized to be safe.
A tutorial for the official redemption APP of the Tax Agency of the Ministry of Finance. When an invoice becomes a string of numbers linked to a phone, drawing, claiming, and donating are all handled by algorithms, and even "trusting this system" has become a new problem.
Putting these together reveals something that happened for the first time in seventy-five years. In the past, this system functioned because of an unspoken consensus: I believe this string of numbers is drawn randomly; I believe the invoices I throw into the box will be handled honestly. But when "who will win" becomes a program with adjustable weights, and when "goodwill" must rely on anti-corruption mechanisms to exist, this system that lived for seventy-five years based on "I believe" was asked for the first time to answer specifically: why should I still believe?
Taiwan Sustained This Design as the Longest Marathon in the World
To even be worthy of such questioning, it had to last long enough. Taiwan is not the only place that came up with this trick, but based on verification, no second case has been seen running for seventy-plus years as a daily routine. Behavioral economist Joana Naritomi studied a similar mechanism in São Paulo, Brazil, finding that sales reported by vendors increased by at least twenty percent within four years: turning consumers into tax supervisors is indeed effective22. But "effective" and "lasting long" are two different things.
Georgia brought a similar idea home in 2012; the official reason for termination was "ineffectiveness," but the think tank that proposed this study itself stated that this phrase had never been publicly analyzed to support it—the real reason appeared to be money: the daily reported volume of qualified receipts dropped from over two million at its peak to only three hundred thousand before closing, and the new government did not allocate budget funds to maintain an attractive winning rate, causing it to shut down in less than a year23; Korea abandoned the lottery from 2005 to 2011, retaining only the prize mechanism for reporting non-issuing merchants24; while Tanzania, far in Africa, only started piloting in 2022 and was preparing a national version in 202625. Other places often couldn't last long; Taiwan lasted seventy-five years without a single break.
Source: Ministry of Finance, ISET Policy Institute, Korean Tax Office
Tanzania is not included in this chart—we only have records of one three-month regional pilot in 2022; whether it operated, paused, or restarted in the intervening years has no public data, so it cannot be compared with the complete life cycle numbers like Korea and Georgia.
What accumulated over seventy-five years is a long string of numbers. As of June 2026, two thousand six hundred forty ten million special prizes have been drawn, but three hundred seven were never claimed, lost forever after the redemption period expired13. Most of these unclaimed millions are simply because people forgot to look down for the draw—but some people were unbelievably lucky: in the latest batch of winners in 2026, one was a millionaire who won with just two dollars spent on a shopping bag at McDonald's in Tucheng, New Taipei City26.
So next time you check out at a convenience store and the clerk asks you "Do you want to load it [onto a mobile device]?" and you reach out to take that thin slip still warm, or let it float into the cloud—what you are completing is never just a transaction. You are continuing a reflex action that has lived for seventy-five years, longer than any person who promoted it, and even longer than the regime that gave birth to it. But this time, this action quietly adds a question that didn't need an answer before: will that string of numbers win you something, or was it all calculated by someone long ago?
Further Reading:
- Economic Miracle — The 1950s when Unified Invoices were born is the same period of mobilization as Taiwan moved from a fiscal cliff to economic takeoff.
- Taiwan Convenience Store Culture — The scene where the most people redeem invoice prizes and say "919" for donations happens at the checkout counter of major convenience stores today.
- Taiwan White Terror — In the era when the invoice designer Ren Hsien-ch'un was imprisoned under the charge of "failing to report spies," an accusation could be fatal.
- Taiwan Transitional Justice — The exoneration process undertaken by Ren Hsien-ch'un, spanning two administrations and many years, is a specific journey for Taiwan in facing its authoritarian history.
- Taiwan Oil Price Mechanism and CPC — Using an official document as a ruler: how one oil price press release divides one liter into three parts—asking CPC to bear the cost, dividing it by volume at retail prices, while no one ever tracks who uses the most.
Image Sources
- Hero: Unified Invoice receipt (2007), photographed by Solomon203, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
- Ren Hsien-ch'un's university graduation photo from 1933, from the eighth issue of Chizhi Yearbook, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.
- Invoice donation box at Puta Temple in Daxi (2016), photographed by Solomon203, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
References
- Article 3 of Unified Invoice Prize Rules — The official system of Ministry of Finance regulations (primary source), explicitly states: "On the 25th of every month, a special prize from one to three sets and other prizes from three to ten sets are issued for the previous month's Unified Invoices," and "Sixth Prize: If the last three digits of the Unified Invoice match the last three digits of the winning number, the prize is two hundred NTD." The regulation does not specify that "major convenience stores" are specific redemption points (it only stipulates issuance by a "designated prize awarding unit"), so the main text avoids this specific claim.↩
- Important Historical Materials of Unified Invoices — Official page of the Fiscal Archives Exhibition Hall of the Ministry of Finance (primary source), which explicitly states: "In forty years, operating tax revenue totaled over fifty-one million NTD, an increase of 75% compared to the two ninety million NTD of the previous year," and "early Unified Invoices used the special prize numbers from the Patriotic Lottery as the basis for drawing." It also mentions that "the Ministry of Finance used variety shows to enhance promotional effects"—this page remains silent on the names and dates of the draw hosts, which is the basis for this article's conservative handling of that memory.↩23
- Hidden Anti-counterfeiting Secrets in Invoices: Experts Say Missing a Stroke Was Intentional — Central News Agency, February 12, 2024, quoting Chen Yong-ji from the document forensics laboratory established by the Ministry of Finance printing plant; TVBS News Network report on May 29, 2019 cites specific examples such as "the 'silver' missing a stroke in January and February 2019, and 'ticket' missing a stroke in March and April." The two independent media corroborate this, but the FAQ on the Ministry of Finance printing plant's official website does not state this in writing, so the article states it was "verified through media."↩
- Unboxing Old Photos: Ren Hsien-ch'un, Father of Taiwan's Unified Invoices — Central News Agency, September 14, 2023, stating that Ren Hsien-ch'un "served as the Finance Director of the Provincial Government of Taiwan at the age of only 38," and that he conceptualized two regulations at the end of 1950, farmed after his release, and was exonerated in 2012; Fiscal Archives Exhibition Hall of the Ministry of Finance (primary source) explicitly states: "At the end of '39 [ROC calendar], Ren Hsien-ch'un, the Finance Director of the Taiwan Provincial Government, conceptualized..." which means conceived at the end of 1950 and implemented on New Year's Day of 1951. The specific date "December 12" lacks primary source support (only found in a Wikipedia entry not cited by this article), so the main text uses the conservative description "end of 1950," without claiming precision down to the day. Ren Hsien-ch'un was born on October 21, 1912, and was over 38 years old at the end of 1950, making the age statement accurate.↩
- Uniform Invoice printing history (English) — Official English page of the Fiscal Archives Exhibition Hall of the Ministry of Finance (primary source), which explicitly states that common patriotic slogans such as "Reclaim Mainland and Destroy the Communists Party" were printed on invoices from 1950 to 1960, and this page notes that after 1961, the content shifted to social harmony/promotional use. The main text uses this demarcation for its dating and does not extend into the late 1960s.↩
- The Last Struggle of the Patriotic Lottery — Taiwan Historical Archives (primary source), stating that the Patriotic Lottery was discontinued on December 27, 1987, after 1,171 issues, because people gambled on its last two digits in "Dajiale" starting in 1985, leading to social disorder; this page does not state the first issuance date. The first issue was issued on April 11, 1950, making it a thirty-seven-year run, see Fiscal Archives Exhibition Hall of the Ministry of Finance's "Patriotic Lottery Issuance History" (primary source), which explicitly states: "The first Patriotic Lottery was issued on April 11, 1950." The Patriotic Lottery and Unified Invoices were both designed by Ren Hsien-ch'un at the same time and initially shared winning numbers.↩
- There Is No Word for 'Hard' in the Dictionary—Remembering My Father, Ren Hsien-ch'un (Part 1) — + (Part 2) — China Times, 2021, a firsthand family recollection by Ren Xiang, daughter of Ren Hsien-ch'un. (Part 1) explicitly confirms the precise date "April 4, 1955, media reported that Ren Hsien-ch'un attended the wedding of Gu Zheng-qiu with Zhang Zhengfen; he was arrested and imprisoned on April 11." (Part 2) explicitly states that he was implicated in the charge of "protecting spies" on April 11, 1955, and "the 'spy' in the 'covering up a spy' case refers to his cousin Ren Fang-hsu."↩
- The Power Struggle Between the Chiang Family and Wu Kuo-chen Behind the Ren Hsien-ch'un Case — A forum discussion that mentions three circulating theories about the real reason for his imprisonment: one is that both Chiang Ching-kuo and Ren Hsien-ch'un were interested in the opera singer Gu Zheng-qiu, and Ren Hsien-ch'un marrying her made Chiang Ching-kuo "perpetually unhappy," leading the secret police to "decide to avenge their boss"; two is that "some speculate Ren Hsien-ch'un was a target of struggle that needed to be eliminated because he was highly valued by Chen Cheng, Chen Yi, and Wu Kuo-chen"; three is that "while he was Finance Director, he blocked funding from the National Salvation Corps founded by Chiang Ching-kuo." The three theories are presented without consensus, and Wu Kuo-chen himself described the case as "a hundred percent miscarriage of justice, a public revenge for private grudges."↩
- Ren Hsien-ch'un Individual Case File — National Human Rights Memory Bank (official White Terror file from the Ministry of Culture), which clearly states the basis of the verdict: "(45) Judgment No. 05," the charge "knowingly being a spy and failing to report," "released on January 13, 1958," and the timeline for restoration of honor (September 2011 - Restoration of Honor / May 2019 - Legislative Yuan revokes verdict); the Chinese Wikipedia entry's claim of "released on appeal by Zhang Qun in 1959" is self-claimed "[Source Request]," so this article relies on the official archive's date of 1958. The section July 15, 2012, President Ma Ying-jeou apologized to Ren Hsien-ch'un's family and awarded a certificate of restoration of honor is not in the official file; see Chinese Encyclopedia (authoritative secondary source), which explicitly states: "On July 15, 2012, President Ma Ying-jeou apologized to Ren Hsien-ch'un's family and awarded a certificate of restoration of honor for his spy charge."↩2
- History of Value-Added and Non-Value-Added Operating Tax — National Legal Database (primary source), which explicitly states: "Effective April 1, 1986, the tax rate was set at five percent," meaning the old gross operating tax system changed to value-added type on 1986-04-01. From then on, Unified Invoices carried the function of transaction chain cross-checking for "input tax deduction," upgrading from a simple inspection tool to a basis for VAT infrastructure.↩
- Invoice Donation Campaign — Official website of the Creation Social Welfare Foundation (primary source), which explicitly states: "Creation has been established since 1986 [ROC calendar]," and "Since 1993, Creation has promoted the 'donate invoice casually, save the vegetative' activity," meaning the foundation was established in 1986 and started promoting invoice donations in 1993.↩
- Invoice Decline by 60%! Over One Hundred Million 'Barcode People' Hit the Streets to Promote Creation Donation Code 919 — Economic Daily, September 18, 2025, explicitly stating that invoices received by Creation dropped from over "one hundred ten million" at its 2008 peak (the exact number is not provided in the original text) to about forty-one million in 2024, a decline of "60 percent"; the total accumulation of 1.75 billion invoices / 1.89 billion NTD in prizes over 32 years, supporting about 800 vegetative patients requiring 50-70 thousand NTD per month, are also mentioned in this article. The section stating that less than 1% of the eighty-four point eight billion electronic invoices issued across Taiwan were donated to social welfare organizations is adjacent to the previous sentence but lacks a clear connector word for "in the same year," so the main text's use of "in the same year" is a reasonable inference.↩2
- 957 Millionaire Winners of Unified Invoices, Over 300 Unclaimed — NOWnews, June 2, 2026, citing public data from the Ministry of Finance/National Taxation Bureau, which explicitly states that a total of 1,264 ten-million special prizes have been drawn, 957 have been claimed, and 307 remain unclaimed (the original text notes 4 are not yet eligible for redemption; "303" is an inferred number not in the original text, so the main text avoids this precise sub-number). The final destination of unredeemed prizes is only stipulated by Unified Invoice Prize Rules (primary source), which states that expired invoices are no longer eligible for prizes and does not explicitly state where the prize money goes (Article 11, Paragraph 10), so the main text does not claim "confiscated into the national treasury," only "cannot be claimed." An earlier anchor is found in Official Press Release of the Tax Agency of the Ministry of Finance on October 5, 2021, which states that "608 have been claimed, creating 608 millionaires," supporting the growth trajectory of 608→957.↩2
- Article 49-1 of the Tax Collection Act — National Legal Database (primary source), which states that the reward for reporting and apprehending tax evasion is "limited to twenty percent of the fine, with a maximum of four point eight million NTD," and guarantees confidentiality for the informant; amended on December 17, 2021, to exclude five categories of tax officials.↩
- Difficulty in Claiming Prizes from 'Invoice Leak' Reports: Only 20% Success Rate — TVBS, July 24, 2017, citing an overall success rate of about 20% for all types of reports; another version is found in Fang Gezi "Cat Eye Accounting" quoting the National Taxation Bureau data that "in Taipei City, there are about 7,000 reports annually, with only about 600 successful claims, a success rate of less than ten percent, with an average award of about 40,000 NTD," but this latter source lacks an official original page and is limited to Taipei City invoices, so both versions are presented.↩
- Street Vendors and Roadside Stalls: Billions in Tax Evasion Over a Year — Far-Sight Magazine, November 29, 2012 (author Peng Lianyi), citing the 2008 survey on "General Status of Vendor Operations" from the Bureau of Statistics, which stated that "the percentage of vendors subject to operating tax was less than 10% of the total number of vendors." This is outdated data from a 2012 report referencing a 2008 census and is noted as such; it is not interpreted in the current context.↩
- Legislative Yuan Budget Related Reports — Published in September 2022, the official table of the Legislative Yuan shows that the proportional reduction rate for agency commissions from FY 103 to 111 (2014-2022) was 10%/10%/3%/6%/3%/3%/3%/5%/5%, with no year being zero in nine consecutive years, and it states that the commission expenditure for Unified Invoice Prizes reached 12.536 billion NTD in FY 112; this report was published in September 2022 and does not cover subsequent years. Further evidence of no zero rate for FY 112-114 (2023-2025) is provided: 5% reduction in FY 112 seen in Taiwan Fact Check Center, 5% reduction in FY 113 seen in Central News Agency report on December 19, 2023 "Agency Commission Reduced (excluding expenditures stipulated by law) by 5%," and 10% reduction in FY 114 seen in the official announcement of the Ministry of Finance (same as [^16]). Because the Unified Invoice Prize budget was categorized as agency commission, it was cut year after year, and twelve consecutive years from 103 to 114 were confirmed to have no zero rate across four different sources, not just one report.↩
- Cloud Tree Fun e-Start Collection Repeatedly Winning Prizes: Ministry of Finance Says Not a Taipei National Taxation Bureau Employee — The original source is Newtalk News on October 30, 2024 (republished by Yahoo News), which explicitly states: "The activity attracted over 90,000 participants in total"; the four people who repeatedly won were awarded an iPhone 15 Pro (twice), a 12.9-inch iPad Pro (twice), a water dispenser and vacuum cleaner, and a Giant bicycle and a 14-inch MacBook Pro.↩
- Investigation Results of Cloud Invoice "e-Start Collection" Lottery Controversy — Official investigation report from the Tax Agency of the Ministry of Finance (primary source), which describes the logic of the handling vendor's lottery program as "increasing the weight value of active participants and giving them priority drawing opportunities, adjusting the range for random number generation, and comparing this random number with the participant's weight value," and confirms that the four repeatedly winning individuals have no familial relationship with the handling unit. The preliminary conclusion of the administrative investigation was phrased as "still meets the drawing conditions for this activity."↩
- Cloud Invoice Lottery Controversy: Taipei National Taxation Bureau Says Judicial Investigation Found No Wrongdoing — Central News Agency, February 5, 2025, which explicitly states: "The investigation results from the Taipei Investigation Office of the Ministry of Justice found no wrongdoing, meaning the judicial investigation results are consistent with the administrative investigation results," and confirmed that the additional claim by the National Taxation Bureau on January 6, 2025, was not for property damage compensation of 24 million NTD. "No wrongdoing found" is a common simplified term in reports from United News Network, different from the explicit wording in the Central News Agency text; the article distinguishes between the two. The original policy regarding prize awarding by the Ministry of Finance can be seen in Yahoo Real-time News retransmission (November 6, 2024), which explicitly states: "The prizes for the third draw that were repeatedly won are temporarily withheld by the Ministry of Finance," and "if the investigation finds no problems with the program designed by the outsourced vendor, the results will be processed according to the drawing; but if there is a problem, the prizes for the third draw will not be awarded." The article only states the conditional policy that has been verified + the conclusion of the no-wrongdoing investigation, and does not claim to report the post-facto completion of "prizes having been fully awarded."↩2
- Keelung Creation Love Invoice Stolen: 1.01 Million Claimed, Redemption No Longer Handled by Volunteers — ETtoday, April 4, 2025, which states that a volunteer at the Keelung branch of the Creation Foundation embezzled four thousand forty-five winning invoices donated by the public and claimed over one million NTD in prizes, having been reported by the North District National Taxation Bureau after noticing the abnormal winning frequency in 2020, and sentenced by the court for embezzlement; the foundation announced that prize redemption would no longer be handled by volunteers and promoted the electronic donation code 919. United News Network's independent report also corroborates this case (this link was archived on April 8, 2025, but cannot be accessed directly during writing, so ETtoday is used as the main reference).↩
- Consumers as Tax Auditors — Joana Naritomi, American Economic Review, 2019, 109(9): 3031-72 (top peer-reviewed journal). The study subject is Nota Fiscal Paulista in São Paulo, Brazil, which found that sales reported by vendors increased by at least 21% within four years, and tax revenue increased by 9.3% after deducting prizes. The paper does not explicitly mention the Unified Invoice of Taiwan; this article only makes an analogy at the level of "the same type of behavioral economic incentive design," without implying that it studied the Taiwanese model.↩
- The Georgian Tax Lottery Experiment After Seven Years (English) — ISET Policy Institute (Georgian think tank), which states that Georgia's tax lottery was implemented in early 2012, originally scheduled until January 2013, but terminated early on November 12, 2012, lasting less than a year, forming a strong contrast to Taiwan's seventy-plus years of operation. The official reason for termination is explicitly: "on the grounds of inefficiency; although no analysis, at least public, exists to justify this statement"; the article itself states: "the key reason the lottery was prematurely terminated was due to insufficient budget allocation," and mentions that the daily reported volume of qualified receipts dropped "from around 2 million...to only 300,000 by the end."↩
- Abolition of Cash Receipt Lottery Prize System (Korean) — Asia Economic News, January 27, 2011, which states: "According to officials from the National Taxation Bureau on the 27th, it is known that the cash receipt prize payment regulations were abolished through a recent notice," and confirms that this system was established in 2005; the report itself does not state the specific reason for abolition, only traces the history of the system. What remained after the abolition was the "reporting compensation mechanism" (prize for reporting non-issuing merchants), with no lottery mechanism; tax deduction listing is another independent general benefit and is not described in this article as a replacement measure, so the main text avoids conflating the two. Therefore, the comparison between Taiwan and Korea should state that "Korea had one from 2005–2011, which has been abolished."↩
- The power of receipts: Enhancing VAT compliance in Tanzania through customer incentives — English, Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI), which states: "The Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA), in collaboration with CMI researchers, launched a receipt lottery in Tegeta Tax Region from July to September in 2022." The Tanzanian government announced that it would launch a national receipt lottery "Tuzo ya Uzalendo" through the electronic invoice management system for the 2026/27 fiscal year (proposed by Finance Minister Khamis Mussa Omar on June 11, 2026, and passed by parliament on June 23, 2026), which is confirmed by multiple independent financial media (FocusGN, Streamline Feed), but both were inaccessible via WebFetch with a 403 error, so they cannot be directly verified word-for-word; the credibility is marked as authoritative secondary cross-reference, not primary verbatim.↩
- Winning Ten Million by Spending 2 Dollars on a Plastic Bag — Feng Media citing data from the Ministry of Finance/National Taxation Bureau, which explicitly states that "the luckiest winner only spent 2 NTD at McDonald's in Tucheng, New Taipei City to buy a shopping bag and won a ten-million prize," as part of the latest batch of winners in 2026.↩
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