Either it’s the form where you certify that you’re not a US person. Or a general CRS form (the one where you declare your taxation status if you’re not a US person). Or you had one of those bank employees who believes that every foreigner is a US citizen 
Or it was a W-8BEN (I think) in case you have a stock brokerage account with access to US equities, but are not a US person.
Another challenge you can try is to make them change your account to use your APRC ID as primary identification instead of your passport number.
So that you can use Real name verification 實名驗證
Yes! The two companies I dealt with today insisted, in a way I found strangely unreasonable, on using my passport number instead of my newly issued APRC number as the primary ID. Somehow they view the Taiwan government’s ID system / number as dubious, inadequate, unreliable. I found it completely bizarre.
Guy
I don’t know if it still the case, but when I did this I had to go to the labor bureau and update my ID number on their pension system too.
Immediately after I got my new APRC last week I zipped up to Ministry of Labor office up Zhonghua Road in Taipei City to get new Work Permit for Foreigners.
My pension etc seems to be handled directly by my employer, which is also now aware of my new ID number (they were completely not interested in my shiny new Work Permit lol).
Guy
This is nice to have, but BEWARE:
If you do this, if you ever change telecom providers, and the new telecom provider insists to use passport number, e.g. Taiwan Mobile, then the mobile number transfer thing will fail cos the old provider is using the ARC/APRC number and the new provider is using passport. AND good luck getting the original provider to change back to the passport number, especially when you are leaving them! I went through this before with GT Mobile and Taiwan Mobile, and it was not pleasant.
The work permit confuses me. I wish I’d scanned the old one before I swapped it a couple of months ago: I’m 95% sure I hadn’t updated it in the past twenty years (through several addresses and a bunch of jobs), nor has anyone ever wanted it. I wasn’t even certain that ratty piece of paper dug up from a file was my work permit, but apparently it’s what they wanted to see at the office.
Maybe it’s because once I was in the university system, that was that, and data ports from school to school. Dunno. Or maybe I’m forgetting times when it was relevant before I got my APRC. Or maybe I’ve been illegal for a very, very long time.
If suddenly your monicker is switched to “illegalinasia” we’ll know it turned out to be the latter!
Guy
Hey, if I don’t know where I am, it’s that much harder for The Man to find me!
