US employer when moving to Taiwan

Legal Taxes
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So I’ve seen this discussed a few times on here and around the internet, but thought I’d bring it up again in hopes of getting some new experiences posted.

I’ve been approved for the gold card visa, just need to get my passport verified next month. I’m currently employed for a US company, and do some work for US companies as a contractor/self employed on occasion.

Moving to Taiwan, it appears that being employed by a US company isn’t an issue. From what I’ve read, if the company has no presence in Taiwan other than a remote employee, there’s not much to worry about. Local person needs to pay income tax and NHI premiums, but the company itself doesn’t fall into any tax liability if not conducting business in Taiwan.

It seems to me that I have two options to suggest to my company. I’ve already told them I plan on moving to Taiwan, they currently employ me via remote.com in Canada (I’m dual citizen US and Canada), but I don’t necessarily want to ask them to move the employer of record company to Taiwan, I want to hopefully simplify this for them and maybe reduce costs a bit.

So I figure I can either suggest becoming a US employee, or switch to contract work. As a US employee, it seems like they would not need to withhold US income tax if I submit IRS form 673. I want to suggest this since employee classification laws seem to be somewhat strict, in fact a couple years ago the few people they had working with them were all contract work but they got everyone hired as employees in order to comply with employee classification laws.

The other way is I go back to contract work, since I don’t plan on working Pacific timezone hours once in Taiwan, they might be just fine classifying me as a contractor. I will need to pay the US Medicare/FICA/self employment tax as a US person on contract work, which isn’t a big deal, but I might consider setting up an S-Corp in order to get myself a W-2 in case I need to renew the gold card visa, get a regular income, and pay less self employment tax to the US.

Has anyone done something similar? How did you get to Taiwan with a foreign job?

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Sounds like you’ve already got a good plan. I don’t see any flaws in them.

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From my experience, most companies seem to be more comfortable with having a contractor working from overseas vs. having a regular employee working from overseas, but if your company has a different preference, I would just do what they prefer.

After all, if you want to keep getting work from them, it’s a good idea to make it as easy as possible for them to hire you (in terms of compliance and whatever way of doing things they think is the best one).

Be sure to also check and keep in mind the implications of each alternative should you need to travel to your customer/employer for a short or extended time (what are the tax implications if you visit your customer/employer for a two-week workshop, …?). I could imagine that this might have implications on your US taxes if you suddenly perform work from within the US even for a limited time (in my case, my home country and Taiwan have a double-taxation agreement, so I am covered in this case, but I’d guess it’s more complex for Taiwan-US).

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Yep, I probably just need to present the options to them

This is true, although I read that there might be a tax-treaty-but-not-exactly-a-tax-treaty signed soon, who knows when that will actually happen. They do a web development conference once a year, so I’ll have at least 5 days in the country where I’ll be working. Probably won’t be much, but I will technically have some income tax due from that without a tax treaty in place .

Sigh, international taxes are so fun