I’ve been married for several years now, and every year my wife uses a program that she downloads from the Taiwan tax office in order to calculate our taxes. It seems to me from looking at the program’s calculations that each spouse’s income is treated separately, and a separate tax liability is calculated for each spouse before the two amounts are added together for calculating the total tax due. When one spouse earns much more than the other, or when one spouse is not working, then this difference really becomes apparent. Also, the effect can be that each spouse is put into a different tax bracket.
I told this to my manager at work, and he told me I was mistaken, and he says the husband and wife should be in the same tax brackets no matter what, and they should definitely not be in different brackets.
Who is right? Nothing that I see on the Taiwan tax websites discuss different tax tables for single filers or married/joint filers, so I’m assuming that my boss is wrong about that.
Does anybody know the answer to this? Hopefully I’ve explained myself well enough, but let me know if I need to provide more information about my question.
I thought with all the married Forumosans out there, somebody would know the answer to this. Maybe these legal forums just don’t get enough views. Many thanks for anybody who is willing to take a look at their most recent Taiwan tax return.
I’m not sure if my case is the same as the OP’s but my (Taiwanese) wife and I have just received a demand for payment from the tax office. We originally received a refund a couple of months ago but now a demand has come to give some of it back. This is for a joint statement filed for 2008.
The initial reason given is that I should not have been permitted to claim tax that was deducted from stock dividends. My wife has shares in the same company. She was permitted to claim any tax deducted from her dividend but I was not.
To add insult to injury, the tax rate I paid on the dividend was much higher than the rate she paid. We’ve sent a fax to the tax office to try to clear up what is going on. We found that trying to do anything over the phone was a bit hopeless. They seem to very good at not answering the phone.
Is it a result of you being in a different tax bracket as your wife, or just a result of you being a foreigner. I suspect the problem I was talking about affects all people, regardless of their citizenship, but I could be wrong.
As far as i know, it’s up to your choise to fill joint tax form or separated.
So, if both of you are working ang making good money then separate taxes will be cheaper (because of progressive scale of Taiwan taxes). If one is working and another doesn’t (or working but making only few) then joint tax form woulbe be better because exemptions for 2 people will decrease total income.
As far as I know, you (as a foreigner) cannot use the downloadable tax return software independently of your wife because the system will not recognize your ID number. Therefore, your wife is almost certainly filing a joint return for the both of you, with her listed as primary taxpayer and you as “the spouse”.
Filing your taxes in this way means you have relinquished your rights to obtain information and certification to the primary taxpayer for the relevant years IN PERPETUITY. See my post here, for how that gave me a ridiculous amount of trouble: A warning for foreigners filing joint taxes
I’m sorry that doesn’t really answer your question, but I would be very surprised if the program is truly calculating independent taxes based on my own experiences.
spaint,
i’m not sure about downloadable version of tax form, but i always walk to tax buro by myself and never had problems to put myself as a primary taxpayer in joint form using my ARC.
[quote=“tairus”]spaint,
I’m not sure about downloadable version of tax form, but I always walk to tax buro by myself and never had problems to put myself as a primary taxpayer in joint form using my ARC.[/quote]
I was speaking strictly about the online/downloadable tax program.
[quote=“scomargo”]Is it a result of you being in a different tax bracket as your wife, or just a result of you being a foreigner. I suspect the problem I was talking about affects all people, regardless of their citizenship, but I could be wrong.
Either way, I hope you get it sorted out.[/quote]
Hi Scomargo,
Sorry mate should have answered faster.
We were told very specifically that the extra withholding tax applied to me was because I am a furriner. I asked if it was because the wife and I are in different tax brackets and was told firmly that was nothing to do with it.
We have sorted out the demand for extra tax. It turns out to have been a simple clerical error on their part caused by a computer mysteriously changing our listings. The wife was extremely pleased that their final calculation worked out to be within NT$2 of her original calculation. They now owe us another NT$1,000.
By the way, we use the downloaded form as well and have never had any problems until now. Just thought you’d like to know.
