I am sheepishly raising my hand. I am now a 100% remote worker, and given the pandemic, would like to go to Taiwan, improve my 国语, eat better food, and be safer. I don’t want to cause any trouble for my employer (and they don’t want to take on the trouble) by officially being an overseas employee. But I’m very happy to pay taxes to both Taiwan and the US and don’t care about FEIE or any other tax-saving measures.
Obviously, the safest thing to do is not go at all. It sounds like the second safest is go for fewer than 90 days, and then third safest is go for fewer than 183 days? As long as I pay my taxes, will both Taiwan and the US be happy and not somehow alert my employer?
I think a lot of people work remotely from anywhere while still being officially a US hiree with no need to be treated any differently to those who stay physically present in the US.
When you become resident of another country a lot of laws and benefits stop applying to you. So you might loose job security, insurance, state and federal benefits…Plus if you are not declaring tax in Taiwan while resident you are breaking the law.
Forgot…your movements are tracked when you get in and out of countries, so both tax offices will be able to determine where you’ve been staying.
Having an employee who permanently resides overseas could also result in a fictional branch office there which would require the company to follow local laws to a certain extend. Some countries might even start to tax the company on the value created by that employee based on local taxation laws. Still not sure if these kind of laws exist in Taiwan or not. But having an „unofficial“ overseas employee could definitely expose the company to some legal and financial risk.
Of course, the risk of actually getting audited because of that is probably very low. And even then, as long as individual taxes are being paid, I doubt that the authorities would launch a investigation - especially if the company is very small. So I guess that’s why many people keep doing it like that.
I’m impressed if you can pull this off without them knowing. You’re looking at a 12-15 hour time difference!! I don’t think you’ll have to worry about the IRS if you file and pay. You’ll just have to worry about the ROC Tax Administration being concerned about your employer (I’d assume very low risk) and your employer finding out you’re in another country without telling them. BTW, paying tax to both is presumably going to be very costly.
Come to think of it now, one of my close friends is doing just this. He works for a US company out of a HK office and they think he lives in HK, but he eventually moved to Taipei instead. He was actually spending more time in Taipei than in HK for work so it just made sense, especially after his employer’s housing credits expired and he had to start paying his own housing expense. Yet, he has elected to do this without informing his employer. I can ask him questions if any of you have something specific. @TroubleWithTribbles
Thanks for the tag. I work for a very big company. Although I am not a revenue source (my customers are internal), my company is risk averse so would not let me do what had initially thought would be an option. Since the passport check is taking so long that my kid won’t be able to start school here in the fall anyway, we will be delaying any move for a while yet anyway. Gives me more time to sort through options. It will probably make more sense to wait till the quarantine ends, do some extended trips to explore some business opportunities, and then decide if the move still makes sense. Becoming a contractor for my current company is a possibility, but I would lose the benefits package and bonus, and contractors are easy to cut during financial downturns.
If I apply for a 3 year gold card, can I pick it up over 1 year after it was issued? I already applied under economy, but due to personal circumstances I think it might be at least a year before I’ll be able to travel to Taiwan.
I also asked (during original application) for it to be delivered at my local office but it never arrived. I finally picked it up at the NIA office earlier this week, where it had obviously been waiting since it’s issue date of early April.
My husband applied under Economy on July 19th. We thought it will be taking more than a month so we didn’t check the status often. I just checked it today and the status changed to "Passport Submission by Bureau of Consular Affairs or Overseas Missions of R.O.C. " We are very surprised it took less than a month.
Now comes the questions:
We are located in Los Angles. I know the TECO in LA is closed, and the website didn’t provide any instruction about how to submit the passport. Anyone has any experience with that?
My husband also need to apply for visa for me and our 2 kids. When we can start applying?
Thank you for all your help. Without this forum, we wouldn’t be applying under Economy and got approved so quickly.
Thank you so much. If you didn’t mention that, I didn’t even know there is a passport verification form. I will mail the passport on Monday after I call them. Thanks again for all your help!
I would call first in case they have not reopened on schedule or they have special mailing instructions. They might want you to mail a notarized copy instead, for example.
Their Facebook page mentions calling SF TECO for passport and visa matters, but not sure this would work for Gold Card applications.