yes. the insurance is optional for you/your company not because you are a foreigner. because you are a business owner/it is not mandatory for your company.
Iâm not sure how employment insurance would work for me as a business owner. So I can pay myself a high wage, close the business, and then get 40-60% of previous salary from government? I think they wouldâve closed that loophole. I told my accountant to opt myself out of all insurance except NHI and they seemed okay with that.
i donât think owners are eligible to employment insurance. it is mondatory for companies with less than 5 employees too, but you should be a citizen or a spouse of citizen, and an employee. if it is not mandatory for you, i donât think there is a voluntary option.
Itâs very important that foreign residents make sure they are enrolled in Labor Insurance (laobao) and check that their salary is insured correctly (up NT$45,800).
The âold age benefitâ is Taiwanâs equivalent of social security. If you work for 25 years @45k, you can get around NT$23k per month starting at 65. Itâs not very much, but it is roughly proportionate to what you might get from social security given Taiwanâs cost of living etc. You can also get a lump sum payout. You can claim old age benefits as early as 55 (50 in some cases). Penalties apply to early claims though.
Many newish arrivals may think they will never stay in Taiwan long enough to be eligible for these benefits. But plans change and sometimes people stay much longer than they originally thought they would. And there are other important benefits that you might need much sooner.
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If a parent or spouse dies and you are insured for $45,800 (same below), you can claim a survivor benefit of about $137k.
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If you die, there will be at least NT$229,000 available for your funeral expenses. Sadly I have known several foreigners who needed this benefit and it helped out their families a lot.
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There are also medical and disability benefits if you have an occupational accident including an accident while you are on the way to and from work.
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Maternity benefits: $137k
If you do not have an employer or your employer is so small that they are not required to offer Labor Insurance, you can get the insurance through a professional union (è·æ„ć·„æ). You do have to pay the entire premium yourself though.
For example, freelance translators and editors can join the Taipei Translators and Interpreters Union](http://www.ttiu.org.tw/). It does not matter if you live in Taipei or not.
2.7 million Taiwanese belong to professional unions for precisely this purpose. They have very good reasons for doing so.
Great info FOC , thanks for sharing!
Yes, somebody I know well is in the hairdressers union and contributes herself every month (she isnât a hairdresser and doesnât work, but pays into this scheme). It also helps with reducing health premiums for herself and the kids.
Taiwanâs unemployment benefit is weak, it might as well not exist.
The bar is so high and thereâs so much you have to prove for such a pittance, that few bother with it.
Taiwanâs government is very anti employee. You get about as much unemployment as a freelancer (basically none).
If you are eligible for unemployment benefits (most foreigners are not) and had the maximum insured salary of $45,800, you would receive 60% of your insured salary for six months. Thatâs NT$274,800. I agree that it is not generous, but it is also not âa pittanceâ.
You can also get stepped up by 20% if you have dependents who do not work.
Applying involves getting the involuntary termination certificate from your employer and filing a simple application with your local Bureau of Labor insurance. The bar is not high. About six or seven thousand people somehow manage to do this every month.
The key qualification is that your termination by your employer was not voluntary.
This is an important issue when employers offer severance packages to laid off employees in exchange for voluntary resignations. Employees in this situation should demand compensation for lost unemployment benefits and informed ones often do.
It is true that you have to register at a government employment office and might have to take some vocational training classes as well as provide reasonable evidence that you are actually looking for a job. Most people I know who have gone through this said that these requirements were not very burdensome. YMMV.
Thanks for sharing all this.
Is there any way to check this online?
I started getting bills from labor insurance soon after getting my ID. Each time itâs roughly 2000 NT. But I have no idea how much I am insured for.
I would def want to insure myself for the max amount. 60% for 6 months is not bad.
You have kids (dependents), so could go up to 80% of $45,800 for 6 months.
As I understand it, higher salary does not increase it. But it is a decent basic safety net.
Found this chart.
Based on this, I should be paying a bit more than 2000NT$, does that mean I am not insured for the max amount possible on my salary ?
If you claim and find a job within the 6 months period you are entitled to half the remaining time left. Example you find a job within one month you can claim the remaining 5 months at half the amount, which would be 2.5 months.
In order to qualify you need to be in your new job for at least 3 months, and your new employer needs to sign off the confirmation form. Asking someone in HR your friendly with is better than your asking your supervisor/ manager.
As explained by others the whole process is pretty straightforward for making a claim at the employment office. If you donât speak or read Chinese I suggest taking your wife/ husband or friend who can.
Little off topic but most important thing about being laid off in Taiwan, is knowing your rights and not getting shafted by your employer. If you are looking at redundancy make sure you get clued up on this straightaway. Iâve seen a few people sign away their rights for a pitance.
maximum salary is 45800 for labor related insuranses, so maybe you are insured for that amount.
you can check at labor department details on your insuranses. or can do it some bank atm too.
your family isnât under your nhi?
nhi is included in the 2000ntd, and labor pension isnât?
As I recall, you can check online using your digital ID. If you live in a city, it may be simpler just to go to your local Bureau of Labor Insurance office.
So I finally got around to checking online using my Digital ID. Can anyone help me figure out what this all means?
I see a lot of empty boxes. I have worked here for eight years. Shouldnât there be more stuff in the boxes?
This last entry in green; itâs my citizenship date, but I donât know what it means. Google Translate says âdate of surrender,â but I donât know what I surrendered; my insurance? I donât recall doing that unless itâs automatic.
NHI falls under the responsibility of your accountant? How much do you pay per month?
It looks like your foreigner data wasnât transferred over when you naturalized. However, if you werenât married to a Taiwanese or had an APRC during that time there wouldnât have been any pension contributions anyway.
Thanks for the clarification. I didnât know that. I had all these entries/deductions in my paycheck for all those years. I always thought I was paying for some kind of labor insurance/pension.
I have my payslips (stored somewhere) for every month I have worked here. I will try and translate those old ones to see exactly what they were deducting.
Pension and unemployment are different insurances. Donât know the exact names myself. I think pension is laobao.
Yes they handle my companyâs NHI, labor insurance, labor pension for up to ~5 employees for an additional ~3k/month or something like that. In total around 5k/month and they charge a few more months for reporting annual and end of year stuff.