That is me, but I only do US taxes and IRS representation, no tw stuff.
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She can do your US taxes though… as you still have to do them even though you do not live there if you are a US Citizen.
Taiwan’s a whole different kettle of fish but Marco has this Lawyer/CPA and all that…
Interesting. So you indeed faced that.
Duration
So you said 6 months. I assume that you stayed 12 months here. And then came back few years later?
Or did you stay little bit over six months and came back after leaving TW for 6 months?
Because the latter one could make sense too. From what I read, people have to suspend their NHI when they plan to leave. Otherwise you gotta continue paying the NHI.
Premium (with no local job?)
May I ask how they calculated your premium? If you had no local job here, did they just charge you minimum or how was that math done?
@all others: Thanks for your replies.
My health insurance should be fine. For the time being I really don’t need another one here. It might be cheaper, but my plans for the near future are not clear. That’s why I don’t wanna change status quo.
And yes, ARC holder here. Gold Card.
That’s exactly right, the premium was the bare minimum which as I remember was $800nt or so a month and yes you do need to shut it down officially if you will be out of Taiwan for 3 months or more.
I seem to recall that if one had a local Taiwan job they had to be under NHI immediately. In your case I’d call the NHI office, from a payphone if you want to stay anonymous, and ask what the rules are because it would suck for you if they catch it in the end and there’s a ton of back payments
Yeah, it’s NT$826 per month as @dan2006 said, paid every two months (at least in my case - not sure whether that’s universal, but they changed it from monthly earlier this year).
They only included local income in the calculation, which for me is essentially zero. It was never clear to me whether they’re supposed to revise the premiums based on foreign income, e.g., after submitting the tax return for the year. I guess I’d have to pay a pretty big bill in that case, but it hasn’t happened yet. 
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Is this for a single person, or family?
Any idea as to how family rates are calculated?
That’s for a single person. I’m not 100% sure how it works with dependents, but there might some info in this thread (and I’m guessing on the NHI site, in reasonable English):
Ok, I had a look at the NHI site, and if I am understanding this correctly, as “unemployed” (if salary is not from Taiwan), we fall under category 6 “Other Individuals”.
The total cost in this tier is 1377NT$ per month, with 40% paid by the government, which means that the individual pays 826NT$ per month. This is for the individual and per each dependent.
So for individual and two dependents (my case), this would be 2478NT$ per month.
However, if we start our own business and start generating income from that, it goes waaay up, and is based on income, and requires 100% of all parties paid for by the individual, and starts at 1200NT$ each (3600NT$ total) and goes up to 6400NT$ each for the top income bracket - wow!
It shows how a part time job that pays for your NHI, where you only pay 30% of the required premium (again based on income) could really be worth it. If you made 40KNT$ a month, the overall premium bill would be 5700NT$ per month (1900NT$ per person), but you would only pay 1710NT$ per month. That is a big difference!!!
So, if I get this right, to sum up (per person, per month):
Income from outside Taiwan: 826NT$
Self employed in Taiwan: 1200-3600NT$
Employed in Taiwan: 570NT$
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Good lord the average person here in Bay Area pays about 500 us per Month
And still has co pays up to 8000 usd a year
You may as well register now because if you register later they will make you pay the entire amount you should have paid from the beginning. I didn’t bother registering and got hit with a 50k bill when I finally did register.
It is same as Medicare in the US, you need to pay when you are eligible. You will pay penalty if you join later.
Than you need to have NHI. No way out of it.
Up until Oct. 25, this would definitely have been wrong info - you could have an ARC/gold card without NHI by not fulfilling the six-month waiting period for NHI eligibility. It would have meant leaving the country every few months, but it would have been possible (and there have been posts here before about people in exactly that situation).
Since Oct. 25, when the Act for the Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals took effect, I’m not sure whether it’s still wrong info. The six-month waiting period has now been removed, which would seem to imply that gold card holders without Taiwanese employers need to register for NHI immediately upon arriving, but AFAIK it hasn’t been made clear anywhere whether that’s going to be enforced in the case that somebody doesn’t want it. (I imagine it’ll be ignored until the time someone does decide to sign up for NHI, at which point they’ll receive a big bill.)
What you say is that a ‘Gold card’ is not really an ARC, it’s just a card of convenience. You just come and go when you see fit, without participating in a social system.
What I don’t understand is, why would you NOT want NHI?
Unless you have better/cheaper insurance back home, or not American and therefore have universal healthcare from your country, and somehow your travel insurance is better/cheaper than NHI.
You might be healthy, but you could have medical emergencies. Would you really want to be stuck with huge medical bills? Also whatever you pay back home (for Americans) are likely 10x what NHI costs.
If you’re a foreign resident getting NHI and a private healthcare insurance in Taiwan would even cost less and a foreign bought one, and you’ll be covered for the total cost of your medical, hospital stay upgraded room, probably even international.
I didn’t say that at all - not sure what you’re going on about now. 
It is an ARC, as indicated by the letters “ARC” on the card, but until recently gold card holders without an employer in Taiwan were specifically excluded by the NHI regulations from participating in NHI for the first 6 months after arrival. Some people also get the cards abroad so have an ARC before even arriving here. I had to wait 6 months before being eligible for NHI as well.
Until recently, a gold card holder living here, with an ARC, but leaving the country more than once every six months wouldn’t have been eligible for NHI - those were the NHI rules. It’s only in October that those rules were revised, and it’s not clear yet how this is enforced if someone doesn’t want NHI.
I don’t know - I did want NHI and would have signed up for it sooner if I could, if not for the mandatory waiting period.
There are cases though where someone might not want it, e.g., if they already have international health insurance with good coverage and don’t want to pay extra for something they’re not going to use, especially if they have a large family where it would be in the several thousands per month. (I appreciate that this doesn’t apply in your situation, but you’re not everyone - I imagine you’d be complaining here everyday if you were having to pay an extra few thousand a month for nothing. 
)
A Gold card ARC means you’re a resident here, so it really doesn’t matter how many times and when you leave or come back. Otherwise it doesn’t make fuck sense, as many things do in Taiwan.
Well, you’d better write to the NHI or government then if you have a problem with this policy. I don’t see a major issue. 
I just wrote what the actual policy is (or has been, until recently).