Take action against Taiwan bank tax residency tax certificates

For the third or fourth (fifth?) time, you’re not the arbiter of English language usage in this discussion, on Forumosa, or among the entire community of foreigners living in Taiwan. You already have your very own thread for these complaints:

Everybody who’s been following this discussion knows that you don’t like the term “foreign residents” because you think it means “residents of somewhere else”. That’s fine - you don’t need to use it. As has already been explained to you, others among us see it to mean “residents (of Taiwan) who are foreign”. I like having “residents” at the end because I think it emphasizes that we live here (rather than emphasizing that we’re foreign/“other”), but I’ve acknowledged your interpretation in a previous post and told you I can see where you’re coming from, so perhaps you could do the same rather than repeatedly trying to “correct” the language of other educated native speakers over what’s a matter of opinion/interpretation.

For me personally, if I’m using “foreign residents”, I usually try to remove the potential ambiguity by writing “foreign residents of Taiwan” on first use. Sometimes I write “resident foreigners” instead, but whatever term we’re using we agree that there’s something wrong with the current situation, and maybe it’s more productive to focus on that than repeatedly trying to sow disagreement/argument over a minor language point you don’t like.

I also put it to you that the Taiwanese government/banks couldn’t care less what term we’re using - whether we write “foreign resident” or “resident foreigner” or whatever else, they’re still going to continue with this unless we’re successful in working together to do something about it (and the odds already seem stacked against us).

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