[quote=“Rotalsnart”][quote=“monkey”]Category 9B isn’t paid employment. It is gao fei and and this kind of income (authoring fees, honorariums, etc) is perfectly legal if the work falls within the scope of gao fei.
As an example, those hundreds of foreign professors and industry experts who are paid to give speeches here every year aren’t violating the terms of their visas because they are paid gao fei. The government does not class giving a speech as “work”.
Similarly, a lot of foreign teachers and editors in Taiwan work as freelance writers and editors. To date, I have never heard of anyone who got punished for earning gao fei.
Maybe others can chime in about their experiences with this. …[/quote]
Yes, 9B is gao fei (literally: “manuscript fees” for readers who may not be familiar with this term), but no, “authoring”(e.g. freelance writing, speech writing, etc.) is not legal work for a foreign national in Taiwan unless the foreign national has a work permit for the specific job producing the gao fei.
In practice, lots of people do this and get away with it every day. The Taiwan tax office doesn’t ask questions. They are just happy to get the revenues, and they cheerfully pay refunds (what a great agency they are!). In accounting practice in Taiwan, a lot of stuff goes on routinely that is not legal, but it only becomes recognized as a problem when somehow the person in the case finds themselves under scrutiny for one reason or another. Then they can find themselves quite screwed. I’ve seen this happen on more than one occasion. Believe me, you are not the only professional in the dark about this. Plenty of people working in HR departments or accounting departments of local firms that outsource writing or similar work to foreign freelancers in Taiwan are under this same misconception. Most people in the past have been fortunate and gotten away with it. In the past few years, however, it has increasingly been coming back to haunt people as the authorities (immigration in particular) have started to enforce these laws more strictly. Because the tax authorities don’t ask questions, the people who get screwed don’t know until it’s too late, when other authorities have noticed the issue.[/quote]
The tax office does ask a lot of questions. Because gao fei represents a potential NT$180,000 tax holiday, it’s in the interest of the tax office to make sure that the 9B category isn’t being abused. They will definitely ask for documention if the paying company has no obvious need to pay gao fei.