No, it’s not. You are just poor and don’t have a lot of money. Taiwanese people spend 2000+ USD on a chance at a Visa in the US.
Taiwan charging you 8000 NT
US charging people 60,000NT
Mic drop
Do anyone know what kind of documentation I need to provide?
You can check this site.
Act for the Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals
https://foreigntalentact.ndc.gov.tw/en/Content_List.aspx?n=66193EBEB13765E7
And this one.
For the Employment Gold Card application process, please visit the MOI’s Foreign Professionals Online Application Platform.
https://coa.immigration.gov.tw/coa-frontend/four-in-one/entry/main?lang=en
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Hi I’m struggling to understand just how much less tax we pay with this?
If you earn over 4.5 million, how much tax do you pay on that?
I know you get 50% reduction, but isn’t the progressive tax rate 40% for foreigners earning over 4.5 mill? So you still end up paying 20% tax?
20% sounds a lot better to me than 40%.
In general, if you get to above 20%, it’s probably better to set up a corporation and pay yourself through that.
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Hi guys,
I’m applying for the Taiwan gold card and I’ve been told my bank statements are not a viable way to prove my salary. I’m from the UK and I have my own limited company for contracting/freelancing software development. For tax efficiency I only pay myself the minimum of £12.5k per year and the rest I take as dividends. Does anyone know if I need to provide more than 1 month’s salary as I’m not sure I can provide more than one more payslip per year. Or has anyone provided dividend payments as a form of salary proof?
I’ve also been asked additionally to provide proof of my expertise in technology. I’m not sure the best way to do this. I’ve given a couple of conference talks and I’ve done some open source work, as well as I have a couple of projects are online as well as consistent contribution to open source as an engineer on github. They don’t have a way in their application form to give these kinds of links though, so I’m thinking of putting them into a CV of some sort and submitting my CV as a supporting document. How has everyone else ‘proved’ they are qualified in technology?
Thanks in advance!
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Your dividends won’t qualify you. They aren’t looking for entrepreneurs, but employees. You will have to satisfy the 160k requirement with salary alone. You will need to provide recent 3 months or an annual average that are substantiated on either a tax return, pay stub, or wage statement filed with your local taxing authority.
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For those who successfully got such a card:
After you handed in your passport at BOCA, did the application status in the web site change?
For me, even after ~3 weeks of leaving the passport at BOCA, the status is still “Passport Submission by Bureau of Consular Affairs or Overseas Missions of R.O.C. (Taiwan)”.
I was hoping to pick up both passport and card in the same trip, as others mentioned they did. Now I just picked up the passport, and will see if the status changes. One day later it did not yet.
Link is broken
Even after a month since dropping off the passport, and a week after picking it up again, the status was still the same.
After calling around a bit it turns out this was not normal: there was some problem at BOCA, so immigration didn’t know all is good, and thus ARC production didn’t start yet. BOCA apologized and promised to correct it today, they expected that after another week or so finally the ARC could be done.
So if your status seems stuck unexpectedly, calling doesn’t hurt 
Edit: For other applicats’ reference, the status now changed to “IC Card in Process”. Sounds good 
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Ok, that escalated quickly. Got the pick up email today, just 1 day later, and just picked it up.
Thank you very much everyone here who shared their experience and information. Highly appreciated!
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Excellent! Congratulations!
Guy
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Good news for those applying in the field of Culture. You no longer need a Grammy to get in:
https://foreigntalentact.ndc.gov.tw/en/News_Content.aspx?n=F0746484B877D582&s=864D5CA300B931BB
@gaoxingdcf - there’s now a special mention for people who made contributions to “broadcast” . . .
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aha, that is some good news!
First of all: Hello Forumosa! I’ve been lurking here for a few months 
TLDR
About 3 months ago I applied for the gold card and the reviewers aren’t able to tell me why the documents I provided are insufficient or what documents they need. Seeking advice.
The full story
I’m in Taipei on a visa waiver and about three months ago I applied for the gold card in the technology category since I do programming and I fulfil the salary requirement. It has not been pleasant.
One month in, the application got stuck on “Review by Professional Workforce Agency”. I called MoL as recommended by a gracious someone in this thread and was told there was an error and I needed to submit some more documents to prove my salary and that it was going to take up to another 30 days. Fair enough, I did that and waited.
Two months (!), many phone calls, and a visa run later (today) I finally got the reply with a generic copy-paste comment stating that they need more documents to prove my expertise but neither MoL nor MoT are able to tell me what exactly is needed. The reviewers seem to be anonymous so I can’t ask at the source.
So far I sent them a bank statement, a certificate / recommendation letter from a software company in England with a links to some projects I had worked on (MoL insisted it had to have the company logo on it for some reason 
). There isn’t anything particularly impressive (a few websites, a simple Steam game for children from three years ago and a startup that hasn’t entered production yet that I’ve been working on recently) but it should be enough to prove that I’m a programmer I think?
At this point I’m not sure what to do.
A local friend has recommended that I send the source code of one of my personal projects or make up some AI nonsense since that’s a quick-to-make-buzz-wordy-thing that a lay person will find impressive. The reasoning is the reviewer has no clue and just needs to see something impressive. Does anyone know if that hold water?
The lady on the phone at MoL recommended that I re-apply in the economy category because then they won’t have to send it to MoT for verification. But I don’t fulfil any requirements on it save for salary so how does that work?
I also had the idea to make a parallel application so I have one under economy and another one under technology so I don’t have to wait that long. I don’t mind paying but I have no confidence in it not blowing up their system 
Anyway, at this point I’m really confused and unsure how to proceed. If anyone has any thoughts they will be greatly appreciated. My current plan is to follow the advice of the lady at MoL.
Apologies about this wall of text I inadvertently created.
Many thanks! 
2 Likes
Ouch, sorry to hear about your experience. That must be incredibly frustrating.
You are not the first person to be told to re-apply under the economy category. In fact there have been a few successful applicants that I’m aware of who started out with applications in other ministries.
It appears you’ve already worked this out, but allow me to make a note for completeness for others reading the thread in the future. The MoL/WDA’s role in the skill assessment process is to see if they can “fast pass” obviously acceptable applications based on their organisational scope. In the many cases that doesn’t apply, they merely forward the documents to the relevant ministry (in this case Science and Technology) who have their own standards and conduct deeper investigations. When the website provides feedback as if from MoL/WDA, in most cases it’s come from the relevant ministry and you need to contact them rather than MoL/WDA who are acting as intermediaries.
However, you appear to have already spoken to the Ministry of Science and Technology. It’s relatively common knowledge that they are not strictly following the regulations as set out. The regulations state that applicants need only pass one of the criteria to be accepted. However, MoST holds applicants under Article 1 (salary) to a higher standard and by requiring them to provide documents to demonstrate a significant level of technical skill (a level defined by Article 2 or Article 3).
The process is document-driven. The reviewers are looking for documents that match some unpublished criteria, and we have to supply what we can to help them approve us. Some recommendations for people applying under MoST are 1) use a maximal approach, and submit many more documents than you think may be required. 2) Write an amazing cover letter to go with your application, to help reviewers understand the collection of documents. 3) Use documents that are independently verifiable or look very official. 4) Don’t expect anyone to open any links.
- Throw the book at MoST, either by submitting one last amazing application with a ton of extra documents or if you’re already confident you’ve done that complain to NDC
- Apply under the Ministry of Economic Affairs
Since the Ministry of Economic Affairs appears to follow the regulations properly, this should be sufficient.
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Alrighty, I changed to Economy-based.
Are MoST requirements a complete black box? From my phone calls they kept asking about software patents or to show that I was unique in some way - whatever that means.
Tad off topic, I remember reading some criticisms of software patterns overall and iirc there’s no need to have a working piece of software to obtain one. I think I’m being a bit wild here but if any random folk gets any random imaginary thing patented… they should be able to get the gold card and skip the salary requirement too
Anyway, now gotta wait.
Thinking outside the box: Do you have a good relationship with your accountant? Would they be willing to write a letter that details your income during a period of time, and provide a copy of their CPA license?
If you ever update information on your Gold Card ARC, here is some reference. Steps 8+ might surprise you 
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“I want to Apply”, “Self Application”, Log in with your account
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“Application”, “Information Change Of Employment Gold Card”, follow instructions
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Update the data you need
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In the “Upload Document” tab choose “send” (no document upload needed if you don’t have anything to attach for reference)
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Go through Chinese payment hell to pay 500NT (in case you use a domestic credit card - foreign should work well and in English)
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Under “Download”, “Receipt Download” get the receipt and print it out
Hint: Check step No. 12 for something else you need, even no one told you so
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Your confused spouse might get a phone call in Chinese telling them that you actually don’t need to pay, and they will send an email with instructions how to get a refund. And they explain they don’t speak English, that’s why they called your Spouse.
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You get an email that the card is being processed, but nothing about a refund
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You get another email a day later that the card is done already
and can be picked up - but nothing about a refund -
You get the new card at the National Immigration Agency
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Now you get the information how to get a refund: Give them a copy of the front cover page of your bank book and they will forward this to their supervisor for the refund. No idea how this works with banks like HSBC that don’t issue bank books… glad I am with old skool First Bank hehe
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and then you don’t get a refund.
Did anyone get one?
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