Taiwan Digital Nomad Visa

The test on this route is applied to the applicant's own earnings, and it is banded by age. An applicant aged 30 or above must show an annual salary of at least USD 40,000, or the equivalent, in one of the last two years.

An applicant between 20 and 29 must show at least USD 20,000, or the equivalent, likewise in one of the last two years.

One alternative removes the earnings limb altogether: an applicant already granted a digital nomad visa by another country need only produce that visa, or the corresponding passport annotation, in place of the whole salary showing.

Proof of salary takes one of two forms, either a tax certificate or a salary certificate issued by the employer. The consular authority names seven tax forms by way of example, being Australia's PAYG summary, Canada's T4 slip, Israel's form 106, Russia's 2-NDFL, Poland's PIT-11, the United Kingdom's P60 and the United States W-2.

That is an illustrative list rather than a closed one, so a tax document from another country is not excluded merely for being absent from it. The account balance condition sits in the outcome cell, and the documents for accompanying family sit in the dependants cell.

What is granted is a visitor visa rather than a residence permit, and that boundary governs almost everything else in this table.

The instrument in force describes the holder as a foreign national working remotely by digital means and not supplying labour to an entity or employer inside Taiwan.

The visa therefore opens no door into the Taiwanese labour market; it regularises being in Taiwan while the holder continues to work for parties outside it.

The gate is nationality rather than money, and this is where a Vietnamese reader should stop before reading any figure. The consular authority states plainly that only nationals of visa-exempt countries qualify.

The visa-exemption list published by that same authority, in its edition updated on 17 July 2026, carries no entry for Vietnam in any of its groups, including the 90-day, 30-day and 14-day groups.

A Vietnamese passport therefore cannot yet travel this route, and no income threshold changes that.

Two further conditions sit alongside nationality. The applicant must show an average account balance of at least USD 10,000 a month across the preceding six months.

They must also hold health insurance together with full hospitalisation cover for the whole intended period in Taiwan, as set out in the description of intended activities they themselves file.

The authority also records outright that issuing visas is an exercise of sovereign power and that it reserves the right to refuse without explanation.

The authority publishes no headline figure for processing time, and that gap is a measured silence rather than something not yet looked up: nowhere on the procedural page is there any indication of how long an application takes to decide.

What the authority publishes instead is a pair of hard deadlines the applicant must watch themselves, and a review chain running through two bodies.

The chain follows one of two roads depending on where the applicant is. An applicant outside Taiwan files at a Taiwanese overseas mission; that mission sends the papers to the National Development Council to review the applicant's qualifications, receives the result back, and only then reviews the visa application itself.

An applicant already in Taiwan under visa exemption, or on a non-extendable visitor visa issued for another purpose, files instead at the Bureau of Consular Affairs or at one of the four regional offices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in central, south-western, southern and eastern Taiwan.

Those papers travel the same road through the National Development Council and back to the receiving office.

The two hard deadlines sit here. An applicant already in Taiwan must file at least ten working days before their current period of stay expires. And where supplementary documents are requested, they must be supplied within three working days of notification. The authority also gives notice that an interview may be required.

What repays the closest reading is what the authority records outright about mistiming. If the lawful period of stay expires while the application is still under review and the application is refused in the end, the applicant bears sole responsibility for the overstay and for the penalties that follow.

An applicant who does not obtain the visa must leave Taiwan before their own lawful period of stay expires.

This route grants a defined term and an absolute ceiling, and both sit in point two of the regulatory instrument in force. The visa issued carries six months of validity, multiple entry, a six-month period of stay, and no annotation forbidding extension or imposing any other restriction.

After entry, a holder who needs to remain longer must apply to the National Immigration Agency of the Ministry of the Interior, and must do so before the period of stay expires.

Each extension runs for no more than six months. The applicant need not leave the country in order to extend. The total period of stay on any one cycle is capped at two years.

That two-year ceiling is the heaviest difference between this route and a residence route, and it follows from the nature of the document itself: this is a visitor visa, so it produces no alien resident certificate and leads nowhere towards permanent residence on its own.

A reader comparing routes needs to see that before comparing sums of money, because the two sides do not confer the same kind of status.

One point about the version of the instrument belongs in the record, because it decides which figures still hold: the text served at this regulatory address is the April 2026 amendment. Any summary written before that month needs checking again before it is relied on.

Point two of the instrument now in force admits exactly three classes of accompanying family and no more: the spouse, minor children, and adult children unable to care for themselves because of physical or mental disability.

There are no parents, no grandparents, no siblings, and no recognition of an unmarried partner. Accompanying family receive the same visa as the principal, on the same term and subject to the same ceiling as set out in the residence cell.

The annexed table lists documents for the principal only, namely a curriculum vitae, the contract, proof of income, proof of an average six-month balance of at least USD 10,000, and international medical insurance; that table carries no line for a spouse or child, so this is a measured silence rather than something not yet found.

There is no additional financial threshold for dependants.

One point about the title of the instrument belongs in the record, because it bears on the legal basis field.

The document served at this address is the Procedural Guidelines for Visa Applications under Article 14 of the Act for the Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals, promulgated on 31 December 2024 and amended on 16 April 2026. It no longer carries the former title about digital nomad visa eligibility.

The status this programme grants, whether a visa or a residence permit, does not replace the holder's passport. The holder still travels on the passport of their own country, so the figure below belongs to the Taiwan passport and becomes the holder's only once they are issued a Taiwan passport.

According to the Passport Index of Prosperous Intelligence, on data dated 30 September 2026, the Taiwan passport reaches 155 destinations without applying for a consular visa in advance. The figure combines three forms of entry and does not count an e-Visa that must be obtained beforehand:

It is therefore a measure of how easily the holder travels, not a count of visa-free countries in the narrow sense.

For comparison, on the same source and the same method of counting, the Vietnamese passport reaches 44 destinations. The two lists of destinations do not nest inside one another, so the difference is an indication rather than a list of places newly opened.

Prosperous Intelligence dates its data and advises checking with the destination’s official authorities before travelling.

Both sources behind this record are silent on tax, and that is a finding from reading them rather than something not yet looked up.

The procedural page published by the Bureau of Consular Affairs does not mention income tax or the figure 183; the word for tax occurs only inside the phrase tax certificate, and there it denotes a kind of salary evidence rather than an obligation.

The regulatory instrument does not mention tax, in either its Chinese or its Latin-script form.

The tax question is therefore not answered by the authority that issues the visa, and nor does it fall within that authority's remit.

This record cites no source from the Taiwanese tax authority, so this cell states the gap rather than inferring an obligation from the length of stay.

Anyone who needs the figure must go to the tax authority's own body of sources, and that is a different task from reading visa conditions.

The fee schedule does not sit on the procedural page but in a separate table published by the Bureau of Consular Affairs, updated on 16 July 2026, and that table is priced by visa type rather than by the name of the route.

Because the digital nomad route grants a visitor visa, the rates below are those for a visitor visa, in New Taiwan dollars; the figure in brackets is the US-dollar equivalent:

Holders of a US passport pay under a separate column headed reciprocal handling fees, applying to a visitor visa issued for general purposes. That rate is the same for the single-entry and the multiple-entry forms, and the table records that this column took effect on 7 April 2026.

Two charges are easily left out of a calculation. The first is a special handling fee of NT$800, equivalent to USD 24, added where the visa is applied for on arrival at a port of entry, or where an existing visa is converted to another type inside Taiwan.

The second is a cable fee, collected in advance where an application requires a telegraph: for the Asia-Pacific region it is NT$130 for a round-way cable and NT$50 for a one-way cable, with each page beyond the first charged again at the same rate.

On the currency of payment, inside Taiwan payment must be made in New Taiwan dollars, while outside Taiwan it is made in the currency designated by the overseas mission of that country. And one sentence should be read before any money changes hands: the fee is not refundable, even where the visa is not granted.