I’m currently doing some consulting and also looking to move and incorporate.
The consulting itself will normally net me somewhere between 4500-5500 USD a month. Is Taiwan viable for this small a business? A lot of countries require me to have local full-time staff. Unfortunately I’m just shy of the salary required for a Gold card…
Do I get a work permit with this size of company? A lot of agencies are saying I can do it without being in Taiwan but I’d actually like to move to TW as well
Hi there. The size of the company does not matter. If you want to set up. You can set up with $500000 TWD to get a work permit.
You’ll need a CPA to get set up. This is mine.
You don’t have to have employees. If you can gross $3 million on your third year, you’ll get another work permit that you can exchange for an APRC with open work permit once you exceed 5 years here and report more than double minimum wage of personal income during your 5th year.
So. Sure! Why not?
So if you want to set up a business you “just” need $500.000 TWD + the cost for the CPA etc. and then you can get a VISA + work permit for taiwan. Even without gold card?
Fantastic, and can I bring my spouse under these rules as well?
(She’s from Mainland China, we married in Hong Kong a few years ago)
Yes. Your headless company will hire you.
The Workforce Development Agency will see you brought $500000 into Taiwan. That is their requirement.
Should not be an issue. As for work permits, I assume standard rules apply. I would post that in the Legal forum for advice as I don’t have marriage visa experience.
Yeah only issue is I’m not entirely sure how to get her into Taiwan. She says she needs a special card from ML (which they’re not granting at the moment) and Taiwan will not accept/put a visa into her Mainland passport.
But I’ll go post over there now, cheers!
Consulting is a great gig in taiwan. Manufacturing is hard in taiwan if small due to excessive laws and oversight, which large capitol can pay away. But if you are selling your service, not a manufactured product, things should be fairly smooth.
Should be great to open a company here as a service provider. Depending on the field, it is quite over saturated with marketing and consultin companies. But there is a real deficit of good ones that can perform well and an effective price! Then its just a matter of networking and time. Taiwan is incredibly easy now to open a company. Just depends on the field you are in and whether there are seriously overpowering regulations or totally open. Generally selling personal opinion services are quite open here. Perhaps just military and certain special sectors being outliers. If you are in said industries of national security, a Chinese spouse might make things tricky. I have no idea, but seems logical.
Thankfully I’m not in National Security and I’ll be bringing a few clients along with me, my main client is from the US and I do full time for them (blockchain server/infrastructure engineer) and I also do various gigs (mostly infrastructure/server stuff) for small European companies when required.
So I have a fair bit of time to get to know the local landscape and transition into providing for local businesses. AFAIK it isn’t restricted, I mostly do AWS/GCP/Kubernetes stuff
If you know anyone who needs me let me know 
Would you explain? I’ve found manufacturing in Taiwan to be easy, with simple regulations.
I think Explant is involved in food processing… which is another can of worms. With all the food scandal it’s understandable…
Taiwan has quite a lot of laws now, so it is quite hard (read, expensive) for lots of industries that are starting from scratch. Also the serious lack of knowledge government agencies have about new laws just makes it all grind slow and/or more expensive. its not like the old days now unless you’re rich and can do things crooked and brush off fines, which is wrong but common still.
What if your initial residency is for 1 year and not 3?
