Wasn’t sure if this should go in the entrepreneurship forum or not, but this question is more concerned about the investing aspect than the operational side of businesses.
I’m gearing up to make my first investment into a local business, as one of 4 partners in a large retail store opening very soon. Actually we’ve already made the investment through my wife, but as it turns out the Taiwan Investment Committee refused to approve my wife since she was born in Macau. So this is our pivot. I am the investor for this and all future businesses. Now I’m in the process of applying to the Taiwan Investment Committee.
What we learned from our accountant helping us to set up is that since I am not a Taiwanese National I’m going to have to do this for every single investment we make, and it costs a little over 30k NT each time.
The alternative would be to set up an investment company through which could make this and future investments. However this would require more paperwork, more diligence, and more carrying costs (accounting and coworking space for a business address)
Is this how everyone else understands it or are we missing something? I guess 30k NT fees for every business we invest in is not an insane obstacle, but it could become a factor. My wife has been looking at businesses to buy that are sometimes as low as 120k NT, so in some cases that extra fee is massive.
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@jimbob132 do you know anything about this? Is it your understanding as well that every investment made by a foreign individual must be submitted to the investment committee for approval? Can it be done directly without a CPA/lawyer?
Thanks!
That’s my understanding. You can file the documents yourself if your Chinese is decent.
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Yes and even if you create a Taiwan company to invest in another Taiwan company it still needs to go through investment committee review if your company’s status is “股權狀況 - 僑外資” (which for foreigners, it will be).
I also believe that having a foreigner join as an owner of an existing Taiwan company will convert that company to 僑外資. Because I tried to have my Taiwanese co-founders create a company first (since it takes a few days) and add me as a foreigner, and my CPA said this would convert the company to a foreigner owned company and would need to go through investment committee review for any future changes. Some local services like https://simpany.co/ won’t work with the company anymore once its status changes to 僑外資. Your Taiwanese shareholders may be less than pleased since when they make a personal capital adjustment (which they may want to do at their own schedule), they have to also submit the application to investment committee due to it being a foreigner owned company and pay that ~30k fee (make sure the company agrees to pay all these costs, and not by you personally because you are the foreigner causing these extra costs).
You can try, perhaps with ChatGPT, but it is time consuming
If she has acquired a foreign (non mainland China) passport and moved abroad, perhaps she can submit a statement saying so. Or submit proof that she has renounced hukou. This is what I ended up doing since I’m born in China.
My wife’s Chinese is excellent. Is the cost still 30k to apply directly? No way to reduce that burden for each transaction?
The application is mostly the same every time, with some updates on why you are making the increase/decrease in capital. But usually CPAs don’t want to share the application they submit since you can copy/paste and may not need them in the future to apply for you.
Ahhh very good to know, thanks!
Yes she’s been a US citizen for over 25 years. And she never had hukou. It is possible that she would eventually be approved, but what happened was she initially was not approved and they requested more info, we returned with the requested info (and also included a letter of support from a “highly respected” Taiwanese citizen who is a close friend) and a month later they returned with another non-approval and requests for more info. The CPA had warned us all along that they may continue to request more info until we give up. In this case we gave up cause time was of the essence and so I’m the investor now instead of her. Which might be for the better as I’ll be the one applying for APRC after my gold card term.
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I think things may be faster/easier for gold card holder since investment committee application form has this question in it:
“Natural person investor holds ROC Employment Gold Card, or ROC Permanent Residency “Plum Blossom” Card”
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