Hi! My husband and I recently moved within Taipei and were looking to park our car at a public lot near by. We found one that offers monthly discounts to residents in the area and brought our ARCs with updated address to register for the parking, but were told foreigners can’t apply for the discount. Only Taiwanese IDs are accepted. Now I don’t know what the reasoning behind this is (the person couldn’t provide an answer) but I find it unacceptable and discriminatory. I would like to make a formal complaint but do not know who to contact. Has anyone else dealt with this type of bureaucratic discrimination before?
Does it only apply to people who own homes?
I guess it is almost equal but people who have HHR there.
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Welcome to Taiwan. Where government issued identification isn’t worth the plastic it is printed on. An ARC gives you no tangible rights other than the right to live and work here.
As to your issue, if it were a government parking lot you could find find out the government agency involved and file a complaint. But chances are it’s private, and discriminatory policies in Taiwan are common and usual.
I believe you can contact the NIA about this.
As for discrimination, yes I know it exists, and it sucks. But from what I see when you guys make enough noise the government usually fixes it. Definitely keep making the noise because otherwise they will not know, or pretend to not know.
But at least Taiwan hasn’t gone to letting police officers murder minorities yet…
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If I remember correctly, that “discount” is a government subsidy so you need to go talk to the government department involved rather than the car park attendant.
As far as I know, only citizens pay the local land taxes (by virtue of either owning or having Household Registration at the property) that go towards those subsidies. How fair would it be to give the subsidies to foreign residents who pay no such taxes?
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Do Taiwanese renters pay this tax, or only homeowners? Just curious.
I believe there are different taxes for self-use vs. rental use, and I’m not sure whether the rates are the same or if landlords pass those taxes on to renters via higher rent, etc. I think the self-use taxes are lower, not entirely sure.
I paid a bunch of land taxes last month for our apartment last month and I’m not a citizen. Are there different land taxes out there that I don’t pay? Or is there something going on with the fact that some bills have my wife’s name on them (the apartment one and our apartment’s parking spot) and some have mine (the rented scooter spot)?
Sounds like you’re talking about Home Owners Association (HOA) fees, paid to your community’s management office for building maintenance, cleaning, trash collection, electricity in common areas, etc.
That’s totally separate from land taxes, which are for public works projects and the like (i.e., the aforementioned public parking lot, but also schools and many other things).
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He said he paid taxes. Pretty sure he knows what taxes are…
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The claim that he paid “land taxes on a rented scooter spot” led me to believe he may not know the difference between a tax bill and an HOA fee bill… hence the “sounds like”.
At least, I’ve never seen such a land tax bill for renting a scooter spot to a non-citizen resident. Could be wrong. I’ve said numerous times I’m not an expert.
Why would foreigners not pay property tax?
Have any foreigners on here renting an apartment confirm that they have paid a land tax bill (地價稅) in their name for the rental?
I’ve certainly never personally seen or heard of such a thing in ~10 different apartments I’ve rented. Again, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, but would be news to me…
(I am under the impression that you need to be the owner or have HHR to get a tax bill in your name, so I don’t presently understand how such a bill could exist for a foreign renter.)
Three forms, top called 新北市政府稅捐稽徵處, underneath that 房屋稅繳款書. Definitely not HOA, which is not a term I’ve seen previously in Taiwan, although of course there’s the monthly guanlifei, which is on a very very very different form and isn’t something I pay at the 7-11, but rather at the little office in my apartment complex.
Now, if this technically counts as a local land tax or a property tax or a housing tax, or if those terms have any specific meaning in Taiwan, I know not.
And damn, if non-citizen apartment owners don’t have to pay these, I guess I’d better stop. I’m sure there wouldn’t be repercussions for that.
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And you’re just renting as a foreigner and this tax bill is in your name? Now it sounds like you own the apartment based on your last post.
Ok, I believe I see what the problem is. I should have said “only citizens and landowners/homeowners”.
The OP was about foreigners RENTING, not OWNING an apartment.
And I don’t know the exact differences between 房屋稅 or 地價稅, and which one(s) cover public parking lot subsidies.
My entire point in my first reply was that: as a foreign RENTER not paying any of these taxes, it doesn’t make sense to expect to get the same subsidies.
If you’re a home OWNER, that may very well be different.
(Edit: and looking at the OP again, it is an assumption on my part that they are renting, not owning. So if OP owns the apartment and pays the taxes then yes, they should figure out if those taxes cover the parking subsidies and if so, they should get it as well.)
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This is basically what I was getting at by my comment. Non-Taiwanese also own property and pay land taxes, yet by what the OP said…
Only Taiwanese IDs are accepted.
…I have a feeling that this parking company isn’t ascertaining whether the foreigner is a homeowner or not. No Taiwan ID, no discount. I could be wrong.
I would think that if OP owned the apartment, they would probably know how to deal with this kind of situation appropriately or which things they were entitled to based on their property taxes. Which led me to believe they were renting, not owning.
I don’t expect a parking lot attendant to know tax law. I do expect a homeowner to know what their property taxes are used for and how to deal with basic situations like renting a parking spot.
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