It can go either way. Either they’ll ask for more info or move it on to passport inspection. I think regardless it returns to WDA…
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The short answer is can’t tell at this stage, need to wait. To provide more details though is there is various responses that the Ministry of Science and Technology could have responded to the Ministry of Labor with:
- Agree to recognize you as a foreign special professional.
- Not agree to recognize you as a foreign special professional.
- They are not quite sure yet and need more documentation.
- It’s believed your application has potential but doesn’t fit into the field of S&T.
a) Suggest you to change to another field.
b) Suggest you enter into the special consultation process.
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Currently in the “applying for dependents” phase. Need to get my wife and kids health certificate which is potentially proving to be problematic. TECO had mentioned that if my dependents were staying less than 3 months then they could apply for a visitor visa and skip the health certificate.
Does anyone know if it would be possible to do this and then change to a resident visa while in Taiwan? Could they do the health check in Taipei?
Details: Bureau of Consular Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of China(Taiwan)
tl;dr: Must apply for Resident Visa 8 “working days” before Visitor Visa expires. — Health Checks can be done in Taipei or elsewhere in Taiwan.
If you go that route, I’m assuming you’re going to bring you dependents into Taiwan under a special entry permit (visitor visa), that has been allowed since 12-Apr-2022. Bureau of Consular Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of China(Taiwan) — You might want to see how much effort (paperwork) is needed before going too far.
For me, personally, I’m almost to the “applying for dependents” phase. My children are 6 and under so no “health certificates” needed. For my spouse, I asked my local TECO (Seattle) for a list of places to get a “health certificate” and they said, “Just go anywhere and get a piece of paper that says basically you’re healthy/normal.” and we’ll authenticate it for “health certificate” visa purposes. I guess it’s dependent on which TECO you go to.
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Thanks! Good to know. I see that the special entry permit is the same cost as the resident visa (which means it would cost us double to do one then do the other in Taiwan) and it pretty much requires everything except the health certificate. So it’s really not desirable, just a last ditch backup plan if we aren’t able to get our health certificates completed in time.
This is clearly TECO dependent. Someone else said their health certificates weren’t even reviewed. TECO Miami did tell us we can go to any doctor’s office (fwiw it seems some of the items on the checklist can’t actually be done at a doctor’s office…so…shrugs)
Hello,
I know that they are no longer sending GCs to overseas TECOs. Does anyone know if it is possible to authorize someone to pick up your GC for you in Taiwan and then to ship it overseas?
Yes, they pretty much just need a piece of paper signed by you. I’d check with the gold card help desk for the exact details.
Yes, actually I did this accidentally—I thought we had resident visas for dependents but actually we had special entry ones, I think because we came before the borders “opened” for dependents. So we had to switch to resident visas before getting ARCs. As I mentioned before, neither TECO in the US nor BOCA here in Taiwan ended up requiring our health checks 
Ha ok thanks for sharing.
Did you have to pay another fee (I think 160USD for Americans) to switch from special entry to resident visa?
A good way to wake up:
You applied for the Employment Gold Card on 2022/04/23.
We are pleased to report that you have passed the qualification check. You must now submit your passport for inspection.
I will give some more details later when I am at my Computer 
My timeline so far:
23.04 Application
23.04 Review by the National Immigration Agency
26.04 Review by the Workforce Development Agency
11.05 Consulting with Ministry of Science and Technology
17.05 Review by the Workforce Development Agency
20.05 Passport Inspection at the Bureau of Consular Affairs or Overseas Missions of R.O.C. (Taiwan)
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For anyone who is interested in applying under “Science & Technology” => “Those with unique talents or outstanding R&D or design ability or original achievements in such cutting-edge technological fields as…” (subfield “Software applications/Software technology”)
I have been working as a web/app developer for 10+ years now, but 99% of the time I was freelancing. Lately I have been co-founding a company in a similar area (SAAS).
Most of my documents were in german language. For each document I put a “Content of this document” as the first page, followed by the original document + a machine translation (taken from https://www.deepl.com/de/translator). The documents I provided were the following:
Other relevant supporting documents.( If there is no information then do not attach(Maximum 5 documents))
- Cover letter
- CV
Verification of domestic or foreign work experience in a relevant field for 3 or more years.(Maximum 10 pages per document)
- Approval of self employment (from 8+ years ago)
- Company incorporation letter
- Taxes of the last 3 years, which proofed my work as a freelancer (they did not match the salary requirement!)
- Employment contract (for my own company)
- Testimonial from a freelancing customer
- 2x reference letters from freelancing customers
- reference letter from a professor, who is an advisor for my company
Documents verifying technology (such as a domestic or foreign patent certificate, etc.), proof of technology transfer (such as a technology transfer contract, etc.) or other proof of expertise (such as academic works, licenses, and documents verifying receipt of awards, etc.).(Maximum 5 professional certifications)
- Bachelor of Science certificate
- Recommendation letter from NTNU/MTC (I helped them fix some security issue back when I was in Taiwan)
- Copy of an article published in a physical magazine about my company
- Copy of an article published on my universities website about my work after leaving
- Software ownership transfer contract (since I stopped my freelancing at the end of 2021, I sold all the rights from my software)
The process was pretty straight forward, even though I did everything by myself. Good luck to anyone who’s applying 
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Yes, it wasn’t ideal 
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Same! Got approved today. I didn’t keep track of the exact dates, but here’s a rough timeline for me.
29/04: Applied and Review by the NIA
03 or 04/05: Review by the WDA
11 or 12/05: Consulting with the Ministry of Science and Technology
16 or 17/05: Review by the WDA
20/05: Passport submission
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Congrats!
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Seeing how similar our timelines are, they might even be doing these in batches when it makes sense (or, seeing how for example the final review by the WDA takes almost exactly 3 days despite apparently just passing on the result from the Ministry of Science and Technology, they might be artificially “throttling” some applications to keep the workload downstream reasonable or to keep the turnaround time close to what they promise)
Quick questions about taxable income and the NHI:
- If I come to Taiwan to pick up the Gold Card and stay only less than 90 days (and come back later in 2023), I do not have to report any foreign income and do not have to apply for NHI within my first visit, correct?
For a foreigner who remains in the R.O.C. within one taxable year […]
- A taxable year in Taiwan is 1st of January - 31st of December like in most other places as well?
That’s correct. You don’t have to report anything if you were here less than 90 days.
And even if you stay here 90-182 days, then you’ll need to report, but don’t need to pay taxes because you’re not a legal tax resident and already paid taxes to your home country. Unless you live in a country with no double taxation treaty.
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I think it’s better to say that if 90-182 days, you have to pay tax rate of 18% on any income received while you were working in Taiwan, UNLESS country has double taxation treaty.
Far too many people think taxes are not a thing because of the above thinking, but I’d imagine many are technically required to pay since they don’t come from double taxation treaty country.
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Well, what’s why I said this 
In a way, yes. I’m emphasizing it should be the defacto answer that people WOULD need to pay taxes if 91-182 days, but in some cases they won’t. And 91 days to 182 days may be higher than if over 183 days.
Your answer inadvertently emphasizes people WONT need to, but in some cases will.
I’m only emphasizing because so many people I know who applied for GC read comments like this and assumed taxes would not be needed to be paid if over 90 days.