Is the government labor insurance(laobao) worth paying into?

I have been offered the chance to pay into this program by my current school. I will pay in $700 per month and they will pay in around $2000 per month.

Is this worth it? What exactly is the labor insurance? Is it just a pension scheme? I have no long term plans to stay in Taiwan and can’t imagine that I will be in Taiwan drawing a pension in 40 years time.

Thanks

Laobao is not a pension scheme. It’s insurance in case you are injured on the job.

Check if the laobao covers both 勞工保險 and 就業保險 because most people/companies seem to lump the two together and the second is unemployment insurance. If you lose your job, you’re covered for a period of something like six month in which you can receive 60% of your pay up to a maximum of some 40-odd thousand a month.

It’s supposed to be mandatory - unless you’re already separately covered. I’m having a hard time coming up with a legitimate reason for them to offer you the “choice”.

This website should tell you most of what you need to know.
bli.gov.tw/en/default.aspx

Either someone is ignorant of the law or someone is pocketing the difference. At first, these would seem to contravene your condition of “legitimate reason”. Upon reflecting that we are in Taiwan, however, both would indeed be found to be legitimate reasons.

If he is talking about the thing my wife “has” to pay into, then it is a pension plan. If so, then the good news is that people refuse to pay it despite it being mandatory, unless their place of work pays into it for them. Despite all the doom and gloom about Western economies, I’d prefer to pay into a pension plan back home over a Taiwanese version any day. There’s just not enough fresh meat coming online to keep it funded in Taiwan.

What if a Taiwanese citizen paying National Pension, and unemployed were to simply ignore the bills for this pension tax? Has anyone been back taxed with penalties for doing that?

I went to the govt. site linked to above and found that if you already have another ‘social welfare allowance,’ you wouldn’t qualify to receive from the national pension anyway. So it still is a gray area whether it is required or not for Taiwanese citizens if they are also paying Social Security Tax to the USA. How redundant and pointless to pay into 2 different countries ‘pension’ systems. It seems like one wouldn’t qualify to receive benefits and thus like other unqualified citizens such as military personnel or govt. workers who already have their own pension system. That’s just the way I read it in English on this website, but I’m no legal authority on this and I don’t know if one can just stop paying the bills, ignoring it without consequence or if their is some formal opt-out application.
See the FAQs and point 2A. bli.gov.tw/en/sub.aspx?a=4L1fRqKKxAY%3d. on eligibility according to government for details.

If you don’t pay the fee, then they keep on sending you the bill/statement and they show you how much you have owing. There are some Taiwanese who refuse to pay it, but as far as I can tell it is required to be paid. They will simply keep on chalking the total up. NHI v2 next year may also require Taiwanese nationals overseas to pay into the health system despite not even being in Taiwan. All these “social welfare” programs are underfunded, so the government will obviously do what they can to prop them up. I tell my wife to pay because that’s the way it is. We probably won’t ever see the money, but not paying may cause more problems in the long run.

I plan to move back to the states and so far I haven’t pay any of the labor insurance bills. So you have to pay it? can you get out of it? What will happen to me if I never pay it what are the penalties? it’s been 2 years or longer the sum is pretty big, I hope I won’t get stopped next time I am leaving or entering the country.

Ironist, there’s two kinds of insurance. The one milky is talking about is an optional paid by your employer. The one I am talking about is paid by all taiwanese nationals if they don’t already have insurance. Sorry for the confusion.

yeah I was also talking about the one that’s paid by all Taiwanese nationals…so any idea?

Just went and asked about this the other day. I believe it’s called the National Pension Insurance. They were very clear that it’s optional, though that may change in the future. They include every uninsured person in the scheme by default, but there’s no legal obligation to contribute. You have a ten-year window to make up your back contributions if you decide to pay into the scheme at a later date. The interest is minimal. After ten years, the first monthly payment is removed from the calculations and can never be paid in, and every month after, the oldest month will be removed.

Yup, my bad. It’s definitely “optional”. While they do keep sending you the “bill” to your address if you don’t have any other insurance, they do eventually stop harassing/stop posting it to you if you leave Taiwan for more than two years.

Really is this true?! I can stop paying it?!

I made a post about this last year and didn’t get any answers:
forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtop … l+security

Just to be clear, I wanna make sure we’re talking about the same thing. On the monthly letters, it says “勞工保險局”, and the English under it says “Bureau of Labor Insurance”.

Not sure if we are. There is also “Labor Insurance”, but we’re discussing the “National Pension Insurance”: bli.gov.tw/en/sub.aspx?a=m%2B5X7elrM1I%3D

Both are managed by the “Bureau of Labor Insurance”

You’d better confirm it before you stop paying anything, but that is definitely how it was explained to me at their office–on Jinan Road Sec 2 if I remember right–not long ago.

I believe you are talking about the Lao Bao, I thought it was mandatory for Taiwanese to contribute. Foreigners too, except for when they left the country, seems I may have been wrong. I know they do ask Taiwanese to make up the difference if they have not worked for a while.
It’s seriously underfunded, and the government is already trying to reduce future payments, or ask for more contributions.