Take action against Taiwan bank tax residency tax certificates

[Andrew]

@comfy123

Interesting that they list citizens as that and not TW…
I was quite curious as in Australia they list citizens as “AU”

They actually don’t, and they actually do (or should) use “TW”. We got it wrong previously. I posted about it here:

Take action against Taiwan bank tax residency tax certificates

Just for posterity and to clear up some misinformation in this thread (from me), Taiwan should be “TW”, not “ZZ”: Kind of obvious when you think about it. Some others previously called it, in fact:

Richart - The first almost/kinda/marginally/minuscularly foreigner friendly bank

It turns out we’ve been wrong about this. A Taishin employee corrected me today when I said my tax withholding certificates should read not “GB” for the UK but rather “ZZ” for Taiwan, like the first one I received did. According to him, “ZZ” actually meant “we weren’t sure”, which is confirmed by this file from the Kaohsiung tax bureau listing it as meaning “other”. Taiwan, unsurprisingly, is “TW”. I’d always kind of wondered why it wasn’t, but I interpreted the use of “ZZ” as something like…

So the ChatGPT output is correct. “ZZ” is what Richart/Taishin used for “other”/“unknown”. My point above was that if they’re forced next year to use “ZZ” because they can’t yet use “TW” and “GB” is inappropriate, I’d accept that as a limitation of the current regulations…

Edit: And by “I’d accept that”, I mean I’ll be writing to the tax office to ask how banks are supposed to fill this in when my lack of tax residency in the UK hasn’t changed and they don’t allow for the presumption of tax residency in Taiwan for the first 183 days of each year. In other words, is it valid for permanent residents to be regarded as not having tax residency anywhere for the first half of each year?