Hi,
I’ve been in Taiwan for a few years, mostly teaching English but now looking to move into doing something else. I was wondering if anyone here has some experience about company structures and which structure would be best in the following scenarios:
- Acting as a distributor of existing Taiwanese/Chinese manufactured products abroad e.g. selling to retail clients in the UK (where I’m from) or Europe.
I’ve heard from a few people that I’ve met from this forum in the past years that they have companies headquartered in Hong Kong with a branch/representative office in Taiwan. Is this the best structure for buying local and selling abroad? I thought about just having a HK company (without the Taiwan branch/rep. office) but does that restrict me from buying from Taiwanese manufacturers? Also, I guess having the branch/rep. office has additional benefits such as allowing me to get an ARC which I can use to stay here (making dealing with Taiwanese suppliers more convenient) but to be honest, I’m not that averse to doing a regular 3 month visa run either if it makes things easier. Also, regarding the foreign side of the business, do I need to open a branch in each country that I want to sell to retailers in?
- Designing a product myself, having it manufactured by a Taiwanese/Chinese factory then marketing and selling to Taiwanese end-consumers.
In my case, marketing would probably just be posters, leaflets and online-marketing. Also, as I’ve found my target customers (Taiwanese university students) don’t like to pay for items online using debit/credit cards or Paypal, I would probably just sell on Yahoo (allowing them to pay by cash in 711, Family Mart etc.) or meet them in person and exchange goods for cash.
I went to a presentation hosted by one of the Trade & Cultural Offices a while back and the lawyer giving the presentation mentioned that if you’re looking to market or sell products directly to Taiwanese customers, you have to at the very least have a Branch Office in Taiwan (again maybe Headquartered in HK or something). He said just having a Rep. Office in Taiwan, although the simplest structure to set up wasn’t legally sufficient for this. I know Rep. Offices can’t obtain Uniform Invoice Numbers but I didn’t know they couldn’t market products either. Does anybody know anything about this?
Also, would you still need a company branch to sell from Yahoo (with 711 payment) or just if you were exchanging cash for delivery with customers face to face? I know most owners of Yahoo online shops (as with Ebay stores in the West) don’t have their own companies and are just doing this as a source of secondary income. The only obligation they usually have is to declare the income on their tax return, but I’m not sure if that also applies to foreigners, especially if you’re just here visa exempt or on a visitor visa as many are. I know a Visitor can’t legally work for someone else but does that also mean you can’t have Taiwan-sourced income that you pay the Taiwanese government tax on?
- The general case of 2 above and probably the most common i.e. selling a Taiwanese/Chinese manufactured product to global end-consumers via a website.
My guess is that a standard HK company with a Taiwan Rep. Office (just for ARC purposes if I want to live here) would be sufficient for this structure?
Any advice anyone has about any of these would be greatly appreciated and hopefully this can help others that have similar plans/ambitions in the future.
Thanks a lot!