I recently got hired as an online teacher on HiTutor, without having any ARC/working permit. I was wondering if I could be considered as a digital nomad, thus pay my taxes in my home country, and then staying legally in Taiwan for about a year (on an visa-exempt basis). I saw a few threads talking about digital nomads, but all of them worked for overseas companies, which isn’t my case. I was thinking of getting paid via PayPal, that would be linked to a bank account based in my home country (I haven’t begun working yet).
You are employed by a taiwanese online tutoring company to teach taiwanese in Taiwan, so you are working in Taiwan. Without a work permit, it is illegal.
It’s important to understand that there are two issues here:
Permission to work. It doesn’t matter if your employer is Taiwanese. What matters is whether or not you’re in Taiwan when you do the work. Unless you have a work permit (or an exemption e.g. through marriage), you can’t work legally in Taiwan.
Tax. Whether your worldwide income is subject to tax (in Taiwan) or not depends on how many days you stay in Taiwan within a calendar year. If you live in Taiwan, you can take advantage of various deductions, but simply receiving the income from overseas is not good enough, unless you stay in Taiwan for a short enough time per year.
