FYI
I don’t think they are “foreign special professionals”.
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It’s clearly specified on their website. No need to guess.
For general forumosans, I think it’s safe to assume that the five year rule still applies, unless you have arrived on a Gold Card or are completing graduate studies here—or if you are otherwise eligible through your university education as noted by the inimitable @fifieldt .
Guy
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This topic came out in another thread in the past. I just leave it here too in case someone now or in the future gets the magic information. It kind of keeps popping out every now and then, even in the Facebook group for Gold Card holders.
Some people claim that the 5-year (or 3-year) requirement for APRC can actually be 4.5 years (or 2.5 years) because once you hit the 183 days of stay during the last year, you are already eligible to apply. Somehow, it doesn’t sound right to me. Shouldn’t NIA be like: “Now that you have lived here for 5 years (or 3 years) plus one day and I have confirmed that each year you have stayed for at least 183 days, I will assess your application”?
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It’s more like… you can spend up to half a year out of the country, but you still have to apply after your 5th anniversary of your ARC acquisition.
If you only count days physically being in tw then your time is 2.5 years.
But you are still waiting a full 5 years for the magic card.
The 5 or 3 year clock of a gold card holder starts from its issuance date, if you enter within 6 months or 1.5 year?
I suspect so too. It just makes sense. I don’t know why the 2.5 or 4.5 magic numbers somehow keep popping out 
Sorry @tando , is this a statement or a question? As far as I know (which might well be incorrect) it should start from the day that the Gold Card holder landed in Taiwan for the first time (kind of like “physical residence”) and not from the date of issue, unless the person was already in Taiwan. But happy if you prove me wrong 
Good question.
That one I don’t know. I predate the gold card’s existence.
For us mortals on regular ARCs…
do you have any source? I had thought so, and I’m sure I answered so several times. but they use different terms for legally residing and physically staying. If legally residing means having ARC, gold card holders could start legally residing when their cards are issued.
Any present/past/future gold card holders know? @fifieldt?
It may be helpful to think of it as two checks, both of which need to pass:
- It’s been more than 3 years since you first arrived in Taiwan on your Gold Card
- Over that time, you’ve stayed an average of more than 183 days per year
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do you know any official site where this is clearly written?
Under the current rule, if a usual ARC holder’s continuous residency is broken (by traveling abroad too often or leaving Taiwan for more than 1 year), the 5 yr clock is reset and it starts over from the 1st day of reentrance even if the ARC is valid during the absence [I thought so while I was writing, but not very sure now.], so a similar thing may be applied to the start date of residency of gold card holders who are not yet in Taiwan.
They count the 5 years with more than 183d physical residency in Taiwan backward from a picked up date. if you were in Taiwan for more than 183 days in each year for consecutive 5 years on ARC from the picked up date, you clear the 5 year residency, so the days outside of Taiwan on ARC at the beginning of the 5 years may be still counted?
You can’t have left the country for more than 6 consecutive months at any time either. I know this because my clock was reset when I left the country for about one week over 6 months.
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Oh, so you should have been in Taiwan for more than 183 days of any 365 days in past 5 years?
So if I got here a few days after the 183 day mark last year…all of last year does not count toward me getting my APRC?
My situation was: left ~Aug 1, 2016 returned ~Feb 10 2017. The clock restarted for me, even though in either year I was in TW for more than 183 days. I even called NHI multiple times to see if a different person would give me a different answer.
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There are many other rules that are not clearly stated. It also depends on who you ask.
- example 1: post-doc fellowships might count, or might not. Mostly it comes down to salary. Grey area.
- example 2: if you overstay you visa (forget to renew your ARC before the deadline) even once, for as little as one day, even a decade ago, an extra year is added onto the total (e.g., 6 years consecutive residence required). However, since I overstayed under a student visa, this penalty was waved.
Don’t like the answer, come back another day 
.
It seems that if the local office stamps the application, and you pay the 10k fee (with all supporting documents, including the extremely easy to obtain local police check), you’re nearly guaranteed approval, after a wait of up to one month. So find that friendly agent (although smaller officers may only have one person responsible for APRCs, which is nice, since they know the rules inside and out).
Reiterating the wise advice of @afterspivak
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what do you mean by might count? Iiuc, years on non-student and non-blue collar ARC are counted, no?
this is written in Article 31 of Immigration Act, and your overstay should be less than 30 days. A year is subtracted from your accumulated years = an extra year is added.
I think I once saw an explanation how to count 5 years somewhere, but cannot remember where it was.
I’ll ask when I renew my ARC next time, if I remember.
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Might count based on who you ask… An example (both examples were) of getting contradictory information from different agents/officials. Of course, post-doc work is work and *should" be added into the total.
However, there was some concerns about the job since it, apparently, wasn’t familiar to that agent and, perhaps due to the wording, it was unclear if the job was paid and what kind of tasks the job entailed. Again this was based on the lack of clear guidelines, such as what is “regular” or “professional” work, which was mentioned in the application form. I could have obtained the records, but the post-doc time was not necessary in calculating my consecutive five years of employment for receiving an APRC.
As such, I can’t confirm if post-doc work does count or not since, as I mentioned, that year was not included in the total.
to clarify, your ARC was valid during your absence from Taiwan, right?