Haha yes, so true! My favourite reply was: “We have been selling this product abroad for 20 years and never made a single sale in Taiwan, you foreigner are our first. Wait, this means we have to deal with VAT???”
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Eh, doubt it. the shops pay some workers barely above min wage for something that used to be a job with specialized knowledge, so they end up with assmonkeys that don’t give a fuck.
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Almost all jobs I seen, even highly skilled ones (like welding) pays barely above minimum wage. It seems with such low wages why even bother learning skilled trades. Only jobs in Taiwan earning above minimum wage that isn’t management is probably going to be semiconductor.
So really, lots of employees acting like they don’t give a fuck.
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Do the tax law incentivize people to sell it abroad vs in domestic market?
Seems pretty obvious to me that if you fail to incentivize workers you’re going to get really terrible labor. You get what you pay for. Of course theres more to efficiency and productivity in the work force than money, but it’s undeniable that Money is the most important factor to the equation
I don’t think Taiwanese employers see it that way. To them employees are just something they tolerate. Look at all the southeast asians they hire, paid even less yet they work harder. To them they are a great value.
I tried the blank key, didn’t work. Took him quite a long time to file it too. And he didn’t even ask for my ID or ownership. I should have asked for a newer bike 
$700 vs $2000 the shop wanted for a new one. But yes most places either don’t know how to do it or simply don’t want to (as you said might be trouble them)
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That’s why Taiwan continues to struggle with innovation or anything outside of manufacturing
Although the companies who do adapt do better in innovative spaces like some of the computer companies
Wholesale exports dont pay some taxes. Government also has loads of handouts and help for companies wanting to export. It is a good gig.
Still, money is money, not sure why a company would be so against local sales. even when I just give them a straight forward order and ask for payment details for immediate purchase.
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Weird thing is if you try to buy those products overseas and ship it to Taiwan, often the dealer will refuse sale altogether. It’s like there’s repercussion for selling the product locally.
I would think that in those situations they are products with specific regional dealers and you must go through them and only them. They have contracts.
Did anyone ever figure out for sure what is behind the thousands of gotcha/claw-machine “businesses”? Nothin’ is more WACK.
I’m guessing there are no other stores that are as common with zero customers. 
It’s money laundering for drug dealers, right?
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There seem to be quite a lot of them.
I’m sure some of them are just lazy business owners following the trend… a trend started by drug dealers, perhaps
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There is a somewhat fixed overhead to having and maintaining the internal process to handle a given type of order which is above and beyond the “obvious” cost of handling the individual transaction. I.e. there needs to be some minimum quantity of those transactions to be worth being set up to handle them. If their operation is set up and optimized for export then handling local sales will be a giant pain in the ass for a wide range of reasons. E.g. I own several companies in America, one of which is strictly B2B technology sales. 99% of the business is drop-shipped from distributors, but we have a warehouse to handle the tiny % of random returns of mis-orders and shipping damage and such that are inevitable in any volume business. Once in awhile some local person will find the warehouse address somehow and come wandering by looking for a cable or something. 9x out of 10 we just give it to them because the part has no book value per se and we’re nice - the operational overhead cost of dealing with an “out of band” transaction like that is much higher than any profit we could realize from it.
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I totally agree. However, I am coming from a point of b2b wholesale. not small, not a pain in the ass. Far above their MOQ. instead of loading into a container and going to the port, they can load into a box truck and to our address. The logistics are easier the only real difference is the tax side.
I get what you’re saying. and in some circumstances agree that’s logical. far too often the sales agent, or whoever’s is in charge of sales, just shuts down the conversation before anything even gets detailed lol. Even worse, they often just ignore customers and leave us hanging. which is pretty unprofessional. They seem afraid to say no. This is the only country I have experienced this in, and it happens quite often (not just me, many companies we deal with have the same issues with taiwans supply. A very common topic of complaint). We sometimes get complimented for simply just basic customer service like answering emails or calls and not ignoring them. its bonkers.
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