What alternatives are there to stay in Taiwan long-term without really working and without marriage/relatives, like a retirement visa? I understand that there is no traditional retirement visa as such, so what are the cheapest work arounds apart from investing 30 million NTD into Taiwan government bonds for 3 years which is kind of expensive.
Apparently, there is also a way to set up one’s own company or rep office and get an employment ARC without really working, but not sure how this works and how much this costs either.
Hold EU passport and have substantial investment, but no work income. Do not want to do endless visa runs since I need a real address in Taiwan and a Taiwan tax ID for foreign bank regulatory reasons. If avoidable, also would not like to have any particular residency requirements, i.e. requirements limiting the time I can travel outside Taiwan if I so want.
So any insights into what to do would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for this @TT. I do not think I will meet the Gold Card qualifications since I have not worked for so long and also have no intention to really work in the future. So even if I get around the past salary requirement within the last 3 years by just having been “somebody important” (e.g. there is a category senior executive of a financial institution), I would assume they would want this somebody important to then put his skills to his use and not just do nothing when in Taiwan? Or am I too worried?
Checks on boxes, and face. No, you do not have to do anything useful. Actually, unless you speak Chinese the country isn’t really set up for you to do much of use. I don’t suppose you have a PhD, or a Nobel Prize?
I don’t know all the ins and outs of the gold card, but that’s probably the easiest path to APRC for you. There are lots of different paths to the gold card, somewhere we have threads on that and @fifieldt is our resident expert.
Thank you. Now in the simplest form that would be the approximately 1 million USD investment requirement in government bonds for 3 years, isn’t it? Which unfortunately is a rather unattractive investment; if you count the opportunity cost of this, then the visa cost becomes enormous, something like 50k+ USD per year if your alternative is investing in the stock market.
And if you go for setting up a real business instead, then I think it is “only” 500k USD which you need to invest, but then you also need to build a real business with real jobs created and real revenues and you also have a minimum residence requirement of 183 days per year?