I am a software engineer working in Taiwan on an Employment Gold Card for over four years. I am currently in the process of establishing a technology-focused limited company in Taiwan. I applied through the One-Person Company Quick Registration system on the One-Stop Service website (https://onestop.nat.gov.tw). At the moment, I am not hiring any employee. I may hire someone later, either from Taiwan or overseas.
I also submitted a foreign investment approval application to the Department of Investment Review (投資審議司線上申辦系統). I have now received the following response:
In this case, the investment is primarily managed by you, including company operations, customer development, and technical execution. However, it has been noted that you are already employed full-time. Please provide a detailed explanation of your motivation for investing in the company, how you will balance this with your current job, your existing and target customer base and customer development plans, as well as your operational and financial plans for the use of funds.
Has anyone dealt with something similar? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
I also have two questions I hope someone can help with:
I thought an Employment Gold Card holder is allowed to open a company. Now I am unsure. Is it legal to do so while I am employed full-time?
Do the investment funds need to be transferred from outside Taiwan, or can I use money already in my Taiwan bank account?
If you’re not a Taiwan national, then you can only use Taiwan bank account funds if you have prior Taiwan tax filings to prove the amounts have been earned locally. Otherwise you need to wire from an international bank account under the name of the investor. Certain countries not allowed but western ones are fine.
Just write a response with brief business plan etc. - they can ask for anything during review. For me they asked for renunciation proof that I’m not a Chinese citizen. My CPA included a business plan, my resume, target hiring goals in Taiwan in my investment committee application. They have experience in what gets accepted. Only foreigners have to go through this vetting.
I think so. Gold card website says - “The Taiwan Employment Gold Card is a combined open work permit, residence permit and visa for skilled professionals.”
Did you use your CPA for the whole business setup or this particular step. How much did it cost you and if it isn’t any issue can you tell what firm or CPA you hired
Not sure how “foreigner friendly” they are. But I know loads of people using sympathy, they have always been quite good and fair. No idea if they have English service and all that.
It can be done for down to 10k for setup that I’ve seen. Not sure what it is now, but I think the actual costs with government are 1000. Ive never paid over 20k for complete setup (but they usually arent great accountants, just legal stamp operators). You actually only need an accountant to do one step, everything else you can do yourself. Not sure how easy it would be without having a very good grasp on mandarin. But it isn’t hard if you do.
In my opinion, if you are planning to have someone else do all your reciepts every 2 months and at year end tax time, pick a good one and pay the higher innitial fees for setup. If you plan to do everything yourself bi monthly and at years end, just get a cheapo one to setup the only thing you need one for and move on.
We’ve had nothing but good experiences and feedback from others with sympany. But we didn’t setup any companies through them, simply moved all of them to them later on.
Everyone we know have LTD companies with them