Woah! They made you 打卡 and still called you a non-employee? 
Gather whatever evidence you can ASAP. Don’t let them get away with pretending it never happened. 
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if they don’t use the 打卡 record to punish teachers for absence or late arriving etc, it seems they can call their teachers non employees.
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Of course, it’s not a 100% decisive factor, but for some reason it’s a factor that seems to get a disproportionate amount of weight in Taiwan.
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in the most recent cases that went to court, it doesn’t seem to get a disproportionate amount of weight. of course, it can be employment even if there is no contract paper or 打卡.
some related things
if the business category of your school is social education, labor insurance is mandatory. i didn’t know.
some cases, court judged company and school are inseparable.
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I have confirmation from a teacher at another of our schools, they’re all owned by the same person and not franchises, that they still have their time cards.
I’m taking meticulous notes as to when I get to work and leave, when they made the changes, etc.
I have written down the day and who took our cards, and gave confirmation from another employee at a different location, still owned by the same person and not a franchise, that they have not had their time cards taken.
I’m also unsure how to go about proving we had to clock in and out as otherwise the time sheets were kept guarded unless we were late.
I sent a second follow up email to the person I’m working with in Taipei in this investigation to let them know of this situation immediately and I have screenshots proving they still have their badges, but I have nothing otherwise.
Editing to add: Taiwanese staff still have their badges to clock in and out at my school as well. Only the 5 foreign teachers don’t have badges to keep track of time.
Perhaps you want to send an email along the lines of “…oh btw, why did we stop using the punch cards on [___年__月__日]? I’m a little concerned now that I might be accused of being late and won’t have a way to prove that I was on time…” and seeing if they take the bait. 
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That’s interesting. Do you have a citation for one of these cases?
The only person who uses email is the actual owner and he’s really good at being evasive to questioning. I did take note of it and sent an email that day to the MOL, but I’m worried if I ask this question then he might catch on that I’m the one who snitched to the MOL.
these ones?
臺灣高雄地方法院 111 年度勞訴字第 71 號民事判決
臺灣高雄地方法院 111 年度勞訴字第 89 號民事判決
臺灣高等法院 臺中分院 111 年度勞上易字第 41 號民事判決
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How about text?
I might be able to message one of the acting directors without it being too suspicious.
So what ended up happening here? I want to leave my contract a few months early and based on your details (weird Contract of Mandate, punch cards that suddenly disappeared in October, Kaohsiung), I think we work for the same company.
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MOL in Taipei said it’s perfectly legal. Contract actually forbids us from holding labor insurance at all.
I’m heading back to the states on the 18th unfortunately due to severe health problems and needed brain surgery. If we do work at the same school, I’m at head office (6), so that’ll tell you everything.
If it’s any convincing, I got offered a job starting at Jumpstart for $720 plus NHI and Labor insurance in Tainan and I almost took it before this hit me like a freight train.
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Sorry to hear about your health issues. So you’ve returned to the USA? We definitely work at the same chain. I just got back from a meeting at the head office. They said I could go ahead and ask the labor department if the 60-day notice and financial penalties are legitimate in the “Contract of Mandate” I signed. I also asked if I were a contractor or employee, and they said “You are what the contract says.” Shame that the MOL said the labor insurance thing was legal. I’ve loved living in Taiwan, but the ethical/labor standards in business here are ridiculous.
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The opinion of some random person – or any person – at the MOL or local DOL is not what matters in the end unless you’re asking the MOL or DOL to take enforcement action. If you go to court with a civil case, the judge is free to ignore what any executive organ of state had to say about the matter.
That said, the judicial system is slow and not necessarily worth your time if you’re facing brain surgery. 
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Thanks for clarifying because the local DOL told me that this chain needs to give us labor insurance, but I was confused seeing what the MOL told KobayashiYuri that it was perfectly legal. The department also told me that the proper notice to leave early is 20 days, and I will have to pay the financial penalties for breaking my contract early because “I agreed to it,” regardless of the contract being shoddy. I mentioned how the contracts here called us mandatories despite requiring us “contractors” to use time cards and go to unpaid meetings, but they weren’t interested.
I’m not sure if this was mentioned earlier in the thread, but strictly speaking you only need to pay a breach penalty if a court orders it, and in most cases the employer doesn’t have enough motivation to bother with that, because it’s likely to spend more on its lawyer(s) than what the breach penalty is worth (and costs awarded to the winning party only cover the court fee, which isn’t much). Of course, if you sue, the employer can make a counterclaim in the same lawsuit, since it will already be spending money going to court.
The people at the Bureau of Labor Insurance know more about laobao than the people at the MOL or DOL do, though again ultimately it would not be the random person you find at the counter or on the phone who would have the final say. The BLI can take enforcement action if premiums were either not paid or underpaid. But if you’re claiming a laobao benefit that you were unable to collect because the employer didn’t register you for laobao, unless you reach a settlement through mediation, you need to go to (civil) court for that, even though the BLI can also take administrative action for the missing premiums.
Your posts have been more informative than the actual labor bureau. The person at the DOL said the breach penalty was fair, and that if I contested it and sued, that the cram school might win because there was a case in Kaohsiung like that recently, so they advised against it. Even after I told the school that their 60-day notice requirement wasn’t valid, the owner is refusing to give me my cancel contract agreement until 60 days have passed since my notice. If I go to the DOL again, will they do a kind of arbitration, or order the owner to give me the document immediately?