Instead of dealing with the high fees of PayPal, I will be given a check by the company I freelance for. The check should be under NTD$10,000. (Will it matter if higher or lower?) My income from this job is not being taxed in Taiwan – I am not on their payroll, just an “overseas freelancer.”
Does anyone know how can I turn this check into cash? If you know more about check cashing/cashing checks in Taiwan, please let me know!
I haven’t yet opened a TW bank account. I’m more than willing to do so, though. Can I use this check to open an account?
What if I were to put this money into a Taiwanese person’s bank account? Will they be taxed or held accountable for this money?
You have to already have a bank account in Taiwan in order to deposit a cash. You can not use a check to open a bank account in Taiwan. You can only open a bank account with a cash deposit of at least 1000 NT. Also, you can never cash a foreign check in Taiwan; you can only deposit it. And the funds will not be deposited into your account until after the check clears. In order for the check to clear, it has to be mailed by regular Airmail (not Fed Express or DHL or EMS) to the originating bank, which takes about two weeks. Then the originating bank wires the money to the receiving bank, into the account of the person who wants to deposit the check (i.e., you).
The mail from Taiwan to most Western countries usually takes about 10 business days (two weeks). But when I have deposited a check in Taiwan, my experience is that it usually takes about 4 weeks (one month) until the funds are deposited into my account. But I don’t understand why there is an additional two week delay in addition to the mail delay. (The check only has to be mailed in one direction. It does not need to be mailed back to Taiwan because the originating bank transfers the money by wire transfer, which takes less than 24 hours.)
I would be somewhat careful about depositing money into a bank account if you are not paying tax on it. I am in the US, working for a Taiwanese government organization, and my pay goes directly into my account in TW, but I pay tax on the money so that if I’m ever challenged about taking the money out, I can produce the tax receipts in my own defense. I’d be concerned about having money in an account if you can’t prove you’ve paid tax on it (although probably the worst that would happen is that you’d have to file tax returns.)
Unless you are a lawyer, architect, or other profession on a very short list of professionals (translators and editors are NOT considered to be professionals!), you DO have to pay tax on (technically, tax money has to be withheld from) money paid you, even if you are a foreign company. This is about the stupidest law I’ve ever heard of, and also to my mind is directly anti-competitive and anti-WTO, but that’s how it reads.
@ Mark –
Thanks for the reply. My check is actually from a Taiwanese client, but that is very helpful advice for when I (or anyone else!) need to know about depositing foreign checks. Really, thanks!
@ ironlady…
hrm. it all made better sense when i was a true “visitor.” Being sneaky is something I don’t want to be and being legit is what I want to be…but publishers aren’t giving me ARCs for the short-term work I’m doing.
I guess that because you don’t reside in Taiwan you don’t have to have a work visa/permit to translate for the government?
Back to PayPal, I guess. And on to reading the labor & tax laws of Taiwan.
That’s what I gather, since I’ve been doing it for 4 years in the States (after doing it for several years while living in Taiwan; I don’t think they would have hired me from overseas).
Technically they can outsource to anyone they like. But the tax code or whatever requires that taxes be withheld from payments to foreign companies if they are not professionals (lawyers, architects, I think engineers – it was a short and irritating list). I actually made a trip to the Tax Office once to interpret for my nefarious former boss “Sam I Am” to find out about this, as “Sam” contracted with many translators overseas (obviously based on my past experiences with him, withholding taxes and actually paying people wasn’t a real issue for him, so to this day I’m not quite sure why he wanted to know). Since I’m working for an actual government agency, they withhold taxes and I sign receipts for them (usually once a year by mail).
In actual practice – I doubt the taxes are withheld from even 5% of the payments going overseas. It’s anti-competitive, for one thing. I would have to charge 20% more than a Taiwanese supplier to net the same pay (not even taking own-country taxes into consideration). And, as an added bonus, as the US has no tax treaty with Taiwan, I can’t get any of that money back. I just put it down to a cost of doing business in this particular situation. I keep that particular job for a number of reasons, not all of which are purely economic, so it’s okay.
I’m sure someone could challenge this in administrative court or something but it would be really complicated even if you could. Meanwhile, I’d settle for finding a bank from which I can get my money out without buying a plane ticket every year.
So I just received a personal check from my father as a gift. Is the process the same? I usually just have it deposited back into my US account and then withdraw here from ATM when needed. That seems easier than depositing it in my Taiwan account and waiting perhaps four weeks as one of the posters says.
Another thing: I use a post office account. Does the same thing apply to depositing a check? Will they accept checks from overseas banks?