I think you can apply for a new gold card within 3 months (?) of the current one expiring, and after you’ve completed 3 full years here you can apply for an APRC. I’m not 100% sure of the details, but I’m in a similar situation with my first 3-year gold card expiring next March, so I was intending to look into it soon. I guess I’ll just get another 3-year gold card rather than applying for an APRC, but I haven’t decided yet. If you definitely want an APRC, maybe 1 year would suffice.
I don’t know about this. I’ve never needed to do a police check anywhere.
You probably want to go to the tax office at some point and declare for the last few years. If you just aim to file for 2021, which you’re already six months late for of course, they’ll probably ask you about 2020 and any other years anyway (either on the spot or later). This thread of mine might contain some additional relevant info:
I’d just politely explain the situation and that you want to pay taxes for those years - the most likely outcome (IMO - not a tax advisor or lawyer) is that you’ll just have to pay taxes plus a small amount of interest for any years you were supposed to but didn’t. The tax regulations do permit fines to be levied for not filing, but AFAIK these aren’t usually applied, especially if you’re showing up there voluntarily.
What I would suggest though is going through all your records for each year and putting everything into a spreadsheet yourself ahead of time so that you know what you’re in for. Taiwanese tax rules are quite simple, even for relatively abnormal situations like ours (off the top of my head: basically total up your income received in that year, convert to TWD using the tax office’s annual exchange rates, subtract NT$408k (the sum of all exemptions and deductions, assuming you’re single with no dependents), and calculate the amount of outstanding tax according to whatever percentage applies).
Yes, it’s a pain to do this if you’re disorganized and can’t really be bothered with this stuff (like I was), but it kind of has to be done eventually so I’d just say to suck it up and spend a couple of days going through everything (like I did). You’re technically supposed to declare everything, but if there’s an odd US$20 payment that’s difficult to provide proof for, well…mostly they appear to go from what you declare.
I wouldn’t just show up to the tax office with a disorganized pile of paper, anyway. I’d try to summarize and organize everything to make it very clear to them what you’re declaring.
I’d also pay attention to any calendar years you were here less than 183 days, e.g., on visa exemptions before you got the gold card. The tax rate on those would be 18% with no exemptions or deductions, which wouldn’t be a nice surprise if it applies to you.