I understand that foreigners from abroad coming to Taiwan to open businesses need to get approval from the Investment Commission, and this can take around 2 months. Does this also apply for foreigners who are already resident in Taiwan with ARC or can we skip this step? I’ve found conflicting information online.
Yeah it takes a while
There’s a special process for gold card holders where it should be faster. Though when I applied either that process wasn’t there or my cpa didn’t know what they were doing so it took 3 months anyways (start of pandemic).
Stupid me was following the instructions for opening a company from Taiwanese sites, when I should have been looking at the sites for foreigners. I’ve already opened the preparatory bank account, which I probably shouldn’t have done until after getting the approval. Oops. Should be fine anyways. If it was so important what order it is done in, then the bank wouldn’t have let me open the account.
I was planning to do the application myself. I just printed all the docs, will fill them out this weekend and then head over to the investment commission and just ask for help on what I can’t fill out
Choosing the right business category can be important since they have different industry average deductions, if you’re going that route
For example software publishing is like 12% while management consulting is like 35% (rough numbers)
Sometimes better to do it yourself. My cpa screwed up many things and did it in a heavy handed way.
If you list your personal phone number (optional) then it will appear on a lot of public sites. I get a lot of spam texts. My second cpa removed it but the number is still on some sites.
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Thanks for the advice