One thing I learnt is once you have the APRC you are exempt from the financial requirement for naturalisation!
The household registration office told me that is the requirement for naturalisation. - I am not sure if that is a reduced amount due to having family who are Taiwanese - spouse, kids etc… but that is where it could have come from
When you naturalise as a spouse they do not need you to provide any financial information. Apparently they use the Taiwanese spouses HHR to make sure you aren’t receiving low income or some other form of financial support. If you aren’t, no problem
Then I guess it’s 500,000 without a spouse. Either way I was told 500,000 NTD
I naturalized without the financial requirement because I had an APRC.
I often see people asking what is better about being a citizen than having an APRC?
Your thoughts on this? For me it’s been so long and many things changed since the 1990’s
Benefits and negatives.
The main negative for me is dealing with that military service stuff and getting out of that.
The next negative is the increased uncertainty in time of invasion. Taiwan can’t lock its foreigners here like it can its citizens… But I wonder how the mandate requiring people to stay will be enforced (being that Ukraine allowed its men who had ‘residency’ abroad to flee) but never recognised dual citizenship. Taiwan recognises dual citizenship…
But of course I will just go the NWHR route which will mean I get neither the negatives nor the benefits but can get HR when I want. (Right before leaving or after military age)
I was at the end of military service age, so I didn’t need to do it. If China does indeed attack, then I will have access to guns hopefully, if I don’t manage to GTFO in time.
But the main benefit is pulling out an ID card when someone tells you waiguo ren bu xing.
Same here.
It was definitely one of the best choices I’d made when I decided to naturalize and get my Taiwan ID. One of the main reasons (which @frank_hnd pointed out) being getting access to benefits, welfares, subsidies etc which a foreigner would not receive. The right to vote is also great but it was not one of the main reasons for me. I voted in the last Presidential Election and it was a great feeling standing in line with everyone else although my candidate didn’t win 
(Guess the “韓流” didn’t come as predicted)…and lastly, of course, whenever someone asks me “你有帶身分證嗎?” I proudly whisk out my card and wave it! 
Yup same for me really. There was no APRC or JFRV before 2000. Anyway I just wanted to have my own business in my own name and not need to have a local partner/s. I did some reserves time as between 36 and 40 you can get called up for that. It’s random and pretty rare.
Loans and credit cards were possible in the early 90’s but far more difficult to get than today. I first voted in 2000. The police and other people at the voting are were like what are you doing here? My reply, voting.
(Edit by olm with permission of @SunWuKong )
Tips for @jspecefini
Some more valuable info from the off-topic thread in temp:
In Gold Card’s case, does foreign income count if you work for an overseas employer?
Thanks for the link. I searched the official rules. I think this sentence is relevant:
It doesn’t say that the assets must be in NT dollars or with a Taiwanese bank. Does this mean that if you have, say, US$200,000 in your brokerage account or retirement accounts (IRA) in the US, as long as you can prove it (with a bank statement) it’ll satisfy the financial requirement for APRC applications? Just in case you were between jobs in the year before applying, if US assets work it’ll make satisfying the requirement a lot easier.
Those assets must be in Taiwan. I used this for citizenship
I’ve read elsewhere that someone successfully applied by putting the amount in USD into a FCY-account at a Taiwanese bank and getting a bank statement (which showed the equivalent in NT$ based on the current rate). They didn’t need to exchange any money and could transfer the USD back after some time.
From what I have heard from other applicants, foreign (employment) income is fine if you declare it correctly as Taiwan-sourced income and then use the tax-statement. Not sure how it would be with foreign income from dividends / rent / … which has not been taxed in Taiwan.
Looks like that loophole was closed then, as the document says the $5M must be in the account for the last full year.
Please help me understand - if the funds were transferred to a Taiwanese bank and stayed there for a required period of time, was it still considered a loophole? Because it wasn’t converted to NT$? If US$ was the issue, and if you were to convert the funds from cash in US$ to cash in NT$, then later on convert it back to US$ when done, other than taking a loss on exchange rates on the round trip, are there any tax implications from both Taiwan and US side?
By “the document” were you referring to this? If yes, could you let me know where exactly it mentions a full year?
They didn’t care if the money was in a foreign currency, just that it was in a Taiwanese bank, no foreign banks allowed. As long as the foreign currency was over $5M NTD, no problem.
The comment about one year, go to the top of this post (post 3) poster olm. The document mentioned 'certificate showing account balance for the last one year. It does not say the money has to be there that long but it appears that way from the wording. You could clarify with immigration if it’s OK if the money is transfered over more recently, say, from an overseas holding.
I don’t recall having to show any proof of income. (Perhaps my employer did so on my behalf?) I just remember needing to have 5 years of ARC and paying a fee of 10k NT. This was maybe four years ago.
There is no way no such proof wasn’t involved. I am still confused which documents needs to be shown but people have mentioned they need to see the tax withholding slips