Hi all,
just went to the NIA today - my second visit regarding working holiday visa renewal.
I got confirmation that each time you exit and re-enter the country on the working holiday visa, you are renewing it for 180 days. If you look closely when you are re-entering the country, the immigration agent actually writes ‘180’ on the top of your entry card.
Due to this, they actually declined to renew my visa since I’d already effectively done so and planned to go overseas and come back again within the latter part of the visa’s year 
As mentioned above - you only really need to renew if you’re coming up on 180 days and have not left the country.
The other thing I learned about renewals (verified by the supervisor of the NIA office in Taipei) is that the English website appears to be wrong (boca.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=131 … e=783&mp=2) “Application for extensions shall be made … 15 days prior to the initial duration of stay expires.” This should actually be “within 15 days” - if you go too early, NIA turns you away The Chinese site is only a little bit clearer on this.
I’m going to be testing this in mid-September too, but today’s trip gave me the confidence to try