A friend recently told me that civil servants in Taiwan have a special perk: bank accounts with 18 percent interest. Is this true? A guranteed 18 percent?
This same friend told me that teachers in Taiwan’s public schools did not have to pay taxes.
Was my friend pulling my leg? Do these perks indeed exist? If so, what other perks are out there for civl servants, teachers, police officers, fire fighters, and members of the military?
Finally, apologies to the moderator if this was posted in the wrong forum.
Members of the military used to get discounts on movies, train and bus tickets, and Chinatrust has (or used to have) a special credit card for servicemen that you didn’t need any appreciable income to get (I still have mine, though I have others that I actually use). The movies/transportation discounts have been stopped, though.
I think that the interest rate for them is lower than 18%, but not much.
Yes, public school teachers don’t have to pay taxes, however this is being phased out (hopefully). It used to be that all civil servants were extempted from tax payments, however the general mood of the populace is against it, so it’s slowly being scrapped.
Yes. At least LEGAL teachers at LEGAL buxibans do need qualifications. You have to have a university degree. That’s more than you need to be a civil servant here, from what I’ve heard. And many of us exceed the degree qualification to teach in a cram school, which, need I remind you, is a business and exists primarily to make money and NOT to educate kids. Thanks for asking.
Yes, 18% on up to NT$3 million – i.e. a handy little income supplement of NT$540,000 per year (as compared with the little more than NT$30k that others can earn on a similar sum deposited in the bank these days). It hasn’t applied to new recruits to the civil service for quite a few years, but the older ones still enjoy it – and I doubt if any government will ever dare to take it away.