I see new shops open when I walk down Yingjhuan road.
There’s a location on the corner of Shuiyuan rd and Yingjhuan road that was for rent, then it turned into a claw machine shop about 2 months ago. It used to be a 7-11.
Another new shop just opened a week ago, also a claw machine shop. There’s already at least 5 of them on that strip, and seems more are coming.
I do not know what’s happening but there’s way more of them than there are 7-11s.
One pizza shop with 100m NT in revenue might raise suspicion, and the owner would have met all his/her customers. Fapiao is required above certain revenue for such a business. The authorities may wonder why a shop with low traffic is bringing in so much.
Claw machines shops - no fapiao needed, cash only. You can open many claw machine shops to spread the revenue so 100m NT isn’t concentrated in one pizza shop, but spread over 10 claw machine shops so each one only gets 10m NT revenue. It would look very suspicious to have 10 empty pizza shops crowded in one night market if there was only enough customer demand for 1, but 10 empty claw machine shops crowded in one night market looks perfectly normal. The actual money laundering wouldn’t take place in sight, it’s an accounting trick the accountant does to make up the numbers and the actual cash transfers behind the scenes.
I think the best strategy is to open a new claw machine shop once your existing one reaches 10m NT revenue, due to the small business deduction here that has a threshold of 10m. If you see someone owns 5 claw machine shops, they can launder 50m NT revenue through them.
Still, you’d think the tax authorities would see right through that.
But seeing how they keep over-collecting taxes these days, they might not care as much.
IRS (in the US) on the other hand, under collects them, so they’d work harder to audit suspicious looking places. Someone opens 50 claw machine shops in Time Square is going to get audited almost immediately.
The problem with claw machine shops is they tend to attract unsavory characters. I’m sure they see a LOT of thefts.
Presumably claw machine shops are an income generator for landlords in between one business closing and another business tenant starting? This happens more often at Lunar New Year when contracts end.
Strangely, I don’t see any claw machine shops in the Huashan park (I think park authorities do not permit it at all, they are quite strict). I actually do not see too many claw machine shops in the general vicinity of Guanhua plaza in fact.
But I hate those shops. They destroy character and just looks shady as heck. I think if there are too many in a given area it will probably lower property value.
I haven’t noticed any uptick in claw machine shops where I live, if that helps.
See: Las Vegas, Macau, the motorsport industry, basically anything really shiny.
So how do people launder money where you live then? 
A couple of laundromats have opened recently.
I mean the whole term “money laundering” literally came from laundromats. The classic way was to open laundromats.
A laundromat with claw machines. Massive passive income. Worth considering as a business venture.
I don’t know how much commercial properties rent for, but it seems you gotta make quite a bit of money to break even. Those commercial washers/dryers are quite a bit more expensive than your home washer/dryer.
I got no idea the investment needed to amortize all the equipment, but it has to be a lot.
How much money do you expect people to put into those machines. If you’re laundering money, it’s one thing because you don’t care if you sunk several million nt$ into equipment, but if you are doing a legitimate business, then it’s a huge consideration.
That and tax auditors likely know how much a given business can reasonably make, so if a business is bringing in 10 million NT$ a month in revenue, that’s going to raise some eyebrows, especially if hardly anyone goes there.
I noticed one extra claw machine last week in a prime location. Almost never any customers , so probably being used for other reasons.
Also I heard those claws couldn’t lift a single hair if you tried. Basically people (online) are saying Taiwan’s claw machines are the hardest to get any prizes in the world.
There’s often an amount written on the machine saying if you spent this much you are guaranteed to get something. I think they have to say this in order to not run afoul of gambling laws.
Seems you gotta call a number and they will get the items for you, once they verified you put in the required amount of money.
That’s exactly what my go-to laundromat is 
I seen laundromats in danshui that also has claw machine in it.
This is what I’ve always they are used for. I never see anyone in the damned things…certainly nowhere near often enough for them to be paying the rent in the often prime spots they occupy.
This is why claw machines are taking over what might have formerly been a coin laundry. Fill a few glass boxes with cheap Taobao garbage, plug it into the wall, and you’ve opened a business.
The problem is that a laundromat actually serves a purpose — people still need to clean their clothes. Claw machine arcades fill otherwise empty storefronts with garbage producing garbage and attract 小屁孩s.
Not only are there tons on main roads and right next to (sometimes inside) MRT stations, they clearly put a lot of thought into advertising and pretending to be real businesses — some even have the obligatory “congratulations on opening your new business” plants taking up most of the sidewalk outside, like some important person with lots of friends just opened a real business that deserves congratulations
Why the hell would spoiled brats want to use claw machines when they can just buy the same crap from Taobao for the price of one play on those machines (those taobao crap is really THAT cheap).
I mean I see arcade places where people go play games, but there are fewer of those than claw machines.
There are even coin op KTV type things. Why would people want to pay money to sing? I never understand Taiwanese entertainment.