Take action against Taiwan bank tax residency tax certificates

It’s probably a waste of time, but I just sent long-winded messages via the “Contact Us” buttons of the Taxation Administration and the MOF websites asking for clarification, in case anyone else wants to do the same. I sent it to both because I didn’t know which would be more suitable. :man_shrugging:

This is what I wrote:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to you about what I believe to be a common error with how Taiwanese banks report tax residency information for foreign residents of Taiwan under the Common Reporting Standard (CRS). I am a British citizen living in Taiwan under the Gold Card program, and I have recently received my “Withholding & Non-Withholding Tax Statement” for the interest paid from one of my bank accounts in Taiwan (CTBC), which lists my “Tax Jurisdiction Code” as “GB” and my “Tax Identification Number” as “NOTIN”. I believe this information to be incorrect under CRS rules.

I am solely tax-resident in Taiwan and have lived here for >183 days per year for the last several years (like almost all countries in the world except for the USA, the UK does not tax based on citizenship, and I have not been resident in the UK for over 12 years). According to CRS rules, upon opening a bank account, foreign residents must self-declare any other tax residency they hold. However, this does not mean that foreign residents are also tax-resident in their country of citizenship, as is often assumed by Taiwanese banks, who frequently require foreign residents to enter their country of citizenship in the CRS self-declaration forms even when they are no longer tax-resident there.

For foreign residents of Taiwan from countries except the USA and staying >183 days per year in Taiwan, it is entirely possible (and indeed common) for us to be exclusively tax-resident in Taiwan, under which circumstances no additional tax jurisdictions should be entered on the CRS self-declaration forms.

Similarly, the only entry that should appear on my “Withholding & Non-Withholding Tax Statement” in the “Tax Jurisdiction Code” field should be “ZZ” (for Taiwan). Because I do not have tax residency in the UK, banks should not be completing this form with “GB”. In addition, to my understanding they should also not be using “NOTIN” in the “Tax Identification Number” field - this is only for countries that do not issue TINs.

I have recently had this conversation with employees of Mega International Commercial Bank, which took approximately 90 minutes to solve, and I am currently discussing it with employees of CTBC bank because I believe this reporting to be incorrect under CRS rules - besides being very time-consuming, this affects many foreign residents of Taiwan and has the potential to cause us problems in our original countries when we are incorrectly reported as being tax-resident there when we are legally only tax-resident in Taiwan.

I would like to kindly ask for some clarification from you on this issue - specifically, your confirmation that foreign residents of Taiwan who are only tax-resident in Taiwan should not be required to falsely declare tax residence in their original countries when opening bank accounts in Taiwan, and that no additional tax residency should appear on our “Withholding & Non-Withholding Tax Statement” documents when we are exclusively tax-resident in Taiwan. Thank you in advance for your assistance.

(If anyone else does decide to write something, note that the Taxation Administration website doesn’t accept brackets or certain other symbols in the body text, so annoyingly I had to go through and remove those at the end.)

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