I was feeling argumentative on Tuesday and wanted to inject some chaos into the universe. Since I had to go to Huanan to collect a new credit card anyway, I decided to turn it into a tedious day out and go ask Mega Bank and Taishin to update my tax residency details, using my certificate of residence for 2020–2024 from the tax office and my entry/exit records from MyData. This is what happened.
Mega Bank
This was a continuation of me complaining at them in the branch last November and them subsequently issuing a withholding statement for 2023 marking me as resident, having stayed >183 days, and with the tax jurisdiction code box left blank:
It took maybe 90 minutes and a lot of phone calls between the branch staff and some other department, but based on my certificate of residence, entry/exit records, and APRC, they seem to have agreed to list me as resident for this year and future years, with a withholding rate of 10% rather than 20% in perpetuity (let’s see if that actually happens).
The more senior lady with decent English brought over to deal with it told me that because I have an APRC they can now list me as resident every year. I’m pretty sure that’s incorrect and not what they’re supposed to do, but given that this is the outcome I wanted anyway I didn’t feel it was my job to correct them.
As an irritating side story, I had to fill out the CRS form again, making it my fourth time with Mega Bank. For anyone unfamiliar with these but nonetheless still bothering to read this boring thread, this is how they’re typically laid out (paraphrased):
Q1. Please choose one of the following statements:
I am only tax-resident in Taiwan.
I am also tax-resident in other countries/jurisdictions.
Q2. If you indicated you are tax-resident in other countries in Q1, please complete the following table listing each country where you are tax-resident along with your corresponding TIN for that country.
If a TIN is unavailable, please choose the most appropriate reason among A, B, or C:
Reason A: The country/jurisdiction where the account holder is tax-resident does not issue TINs to its residents.
Reason B: The account holder is unable to obtain a TIN. If you select this reason, please explain why the account holder is unable to obtain a TIN.
Reason C: A TIN is not required. Only select this reason if the domestic law of the relevant country/jurisdiction of the account holder’s tax residence does not require the collection of TINs.
| Country/jurisdiction of tax residence | Tax identification number (TIN) | If no TIN is available enter reason A, B, or C | If reason B, explain why the account holder cannot obtain a TIN |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blah | Blah | Blah | Blah |
| Blah | Blah | Blah | Blah |
| Blah | Blah | Blah | Blah |
Some banks, like Mega Bank, skip Q1 and just go straight to the table for listing the countries/jurisdictions of tax residency. I suspect this might be different on the Chinese-language forms, as it is with Huanan, but on the English form there’s no option for declaring you’re only tax-resident in Taiwan — the assumption here seems to be that if you’re filling in the English form you must be tax-resident somewhere else too.
In any case, as usual I just entered “Taiwan” and my APRC number in the table and crossed out the following rows for good measure. The lady was fine with this but then offhandedly explained to me that I didn’t need to do anything else because I’d chosen reason C so didn’t need to supply a TIN for the UK.
Now, because of the weird pagination of Mega Bank’s CRS form, the description of reason C above coincidentally happens to appear at the start of the third page, directly above the table where you list the countries. She’d apparently understood this as meaning that anything filled in on the table belongs to reason C and that’s why I don’t need to provide the TIN for the UK, a country I’m not tax-resident in.
I told her (politely, I think) that she was wrong about this and that’s not why I don’t need to enter a TIN — why don’t they ever read their own bloody forms?! She insisted that it was, that she deals with these forms every day and knows what she’s doing, and got in a huff with me.
I didn’t see her again after this, and she just left me to be dealt with for the final steps by the younger guy whose counter it was but who didn’t speak much English and seemed less experienced with the forms. I asked him to thank her for her help when I left. 
Taishin/Richart
This was a continuation of me complaining at them in the branch… oh, I don’t know now — also last November I think. I was told by the staff member that she needed to check some aspects of my complaint and Taishin would contact me, but they never bothered getting back to me.
I sent them a follow-up e-mail in August, complaining about how they were still sending me incorrect withholding certificates, how they’d never gotten back to me, and why they asked four times where I’m tax-resident when I opened the account and still ignored my answers. I also attached copies of my certificate of residence and entry/exit records.
Taishin called me back a couple of days later. I first spent a ridiculous amount of time explaining to them that citizenship/nationality isn’t the same as tax residency, and after a lot of back-and-forth they agreed I could go into a branch with my entry/exit records after I’ve spent 183 days in Taiwan each year to get them to change the withholding statements for that year.
That’s what I finally did on Tuesday. After showing them the certificate of residence and entry/exit record, they agreed they’d tick the “has the account holder spent 183 days in Taiwan this year?” box and change the withholding rate to 10%.
They refused to stop putting “GB” in the “tax jurisdiction code” box, despite me repeatedly explaining that I don’t have tax residency in the UK. They also said they wouldn’t be ticking the “residency” box because I’m a foreigner — it looks to me that they’re interpreting the “domicile”/“住所” in this box (Chinese: “國內有無住所”) as meaning household registration, in the same way that the tax office has been doing. I argued a bit about both of those things, but his manager stuck to her guns.
At the end, I did also show them the withholding certificate from Mega Bank listing my residency as “yes” and without “GB”, which seemed to make them unsure about their position. He asked to take a copy of that and said they’d call me back. I’m thinking to write to the tax office to ask for clarification about how those two boxes should be completed for foreigners, especially those with an APRC and having stayed for >183 days in the current year.
The young Taishin guy I was dealing with was alright though. When I went to his counter, he said something like “Oh, it’s you. You complained about this before right?” 
(He wasn’t even the one dealing with me last time — it was a couple of the female staff, so they must have been gossiping about the annoying foreigner.)