Taiwan Employment Gold Card

The monthly salary of NT$160,000 is only one route and applies only to certain fields and subfields, not as a general condition of the programme. It means a monthly salary, or average monthly salary, of NT$160,000 or above in any year within the three years preceding the month of application.

Only amounts shown as "salary" on the tax statement count; income from sole proprietorships and dividend income do not count, and freelance income counts only where the tax statement clearly shows it as salary.

Accepted proof is a salary withholding certificate or tax certificate. The guidance gives examples such as the US W-2, the UK P60 and the Canadian T4, and names no Vietnamese equivalent.

Each professional field has its own criteria, and the salary level is only one route among them. To see which field applies, applicants can use the qualification check tool on the Gold Card site.

The Employment Gold Card is a four-in-one document: a work permit, a resident visa, an alien resident certificate and a re-entry permit. The work permit is an open one, so the holder may look for work, work for several parties and change jobs without any employer sponsoring the application.

The card itself imposes no minimum number of days in Taiwan. The official portal states plainly, however, that two benefits depend on staying long enough: treatment as a tax resident, and a pathway to permanent residence.

The permanent residence route the authority publishes requires holding the card for at least three years and staying in Taiwan for three consecutive years as a cardholder, averaging 183 days or more a year.

The applicant must be an adult, have no criminal record, have considerable assets or skills, and be in line with the national interest.

An application may be filed only from the day after three full years of holding the card, and residence status must be unbroken at the time of filing. A card due to expire before eligibility must be extended in advance, so the three-year mark and the card expiry date have to be watched together.

There is one shortcut: a cardholder whose domestic salary and professional income in the most recent year reach NT$6 million or more may apply for permanent residence after as little as one year of residence.

On degrees, the same page gives two different figures for the same concession, within a single answer.

The first note says a doctoral degree from Taiwan waives one year of residence; the note directly after says a doctorate offsets two years and a master's degree one year. Anyone relying on this concession should ask the authority directly before counting.

The agency publishes the timeline in four named stages rather than one headline figure, and that presentation is more useful than a single number because an applicant can tell where they stand.

Stage one, information check: the National Immigration Agency confirms basic details, one to two weeks. Stage two, qualification check: the relevant ministries review the application, one to two months, and the agency states plainly that a request for supplementary documents makes it longer.

Stage three, passport inspection: for applicants abroad, the local Taiwan representative office inspects the passport, one week; for domestic applicants this stage is skipped entirely.

Stage four, secondary review: the National Immigration Agency performs the final review and prints the card, one to two weeks. Taken together, a domestic applicant on the best case waits roughly seven weeks, while an applicant abroad on the slow case waits around three months.

What repays the closest reading, though, is a background-based exception the agency publishes openly rather than burying: an applicant who has worked for any Mainland Chinese company or government body should expect stage four alone to run at least one to two months instead of one to two weeks.

The final stage on its own then lasting nearly as long as the first three combined.

This route carries no presence obligation, and that is read from the source page rather than inferred.

The programme authority's own Validity and Extension page sets no minimum stay, states no number of days to be spent in Taiwan, says nothing about leaving Taiwan or a 183-day mark, and does not mention physical presence.

What the authority puts in place of a presence duty is a validity cycle the applicant chooses: a card may be applied for with a validity of one year, two years or three years.

The extension door has a narrow, fixed window: within four months before the card expires, if the holder still meets the eligibility criteria, they may apply for an extension; and the authority prompts them, since the National Immigration Agency sends an email notification about four months before expiry.

What repays the closest reading is the difference between the two roads available after that, because it decides whether or not there is a gap in residence status.

An extension is filed within the four months before expiry, and the new card takes effect immediately following the previous card's expiry date — no gap.

A re-application is a fresh application filed after the card has expired, and the new card runs from the date of approval — so the whole stretch between expiry and approval is a break.

The authority adds two further points. Whether extending or re-applying, the applicant must meet the application requirements, and if they no longer meet the original criteria they should check whether they qualify under other criteria and apply accordingly.

The online buttons for extension and re-application are two different buttons, so pressing the wrong one takes the applicant down the wrong road.

The spouse and minor children of an Employment Gold Card holder are eligible to reside in Taiwan as dependants. A cardholder who is employed, an employer or self-employed in Taiwan may enrol directly in the National Health Insurance programme together with their dependants.

Parents and grandparents are not admitted to residence on this route. They may apply for a visitor visa through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or a mission abroad, a one-year multiple-entry visa allowing up to six months at a time, with a maximum total stay of one year.

Dependants have a permanent residence route of their own, and it runs slower than the holder's. According to the portal's permanent residence questions, a spouse and minor children, or adult children with a disability who cannot care for themselves, may apply only once the cardholder has obtained permanent residence.

From that point they must stay a further three consecutive years or more, averaging 183 days or more a year; in return they are exempt from the proof of financial means.

Adult children without a disability take the general route instead: five years of continuous lawful residence, more than 183 days in each year, and compliance with Article 25 of the Immigration Act. The reduction in required residence for a Taiwanese doctorate or master's degree applies to the cardholder only, not to dependants.

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 27 September 2026, the Taiwan passport reaches 162 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 43 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.

The tax benefits do not come with the card itself. The Gold Card site states that a foreign professional holding the card must still meet specific conditions to enjoy them, and cites Article 3 of the Regulations Governing Reduction and Exemption of Income Tax of Foreign Specialist Professionals.

The Regulations as amended on 2 March 2026 set three conditions for a Gold Card holder: first-time approval to reside in Taiwan for work; professional work related to the recognised expertise; and, in the five years before the card was issued, no household registration in Taiwan and no residence under the Income Tax Act.

The benefit sits in Article 4. For the first five years, counted from the first year the person resides in Taiwan for 183 full days with annual salary above NT$3 million, half of the salary above NT$3 million is excluded from gross consolidated income.

A change of employer within those five years does not end the benefit, provided the person continues in the recognised professional work.

A note on references: the current Regulations cite Article 22 of the Act for the Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals, while the Gold Card site still cites Article 20, and Article 24 for Hong Kong and Macau residents.

The fee schedule for this route is printed outright by the authority and splits along three variables rather than one: passport nationality, where the application is filed, and the self-chosen card validity.

First applications: a holder of a non-US foreign passport pays NT$3,700 for a one-year card, NT$4,700 for two years and NT$5,700 for three.

A US passport holder applying domestically pays those same three rates, but a US passport holder applying abroad pays NT$7,605, NT$8,605 and NT$9,605. That is more than double, and this is exactly where an inaccurate summary would leave a reader thousands of Taiwan dollars short.

Residents of Hong Kong or Macau pay a flat NT$3,100 for one-year to three-year validity. Holders of a valid Alien Resident Certificate, or of other certificates functioning as one, applying domestically pay NT$1,500, NT$2,500 and NT$3,500.

Extensions are markedly cheaper: foreign passport holders pay NT$1,500, NT$2,500 and NT$3,500; residents of Hong Kong or Macau pay a flat NT$800 across all three validities.

One sentence to read before paying anything: the application fee is non-refundable regardless of the result of the application.

On how to pay, the authority offers six online methods: international credit cards (JCB, visa or MasterCard), domestic credit cards, the e-government payment platform, virtual account payment, the four major convenience store chains, and Web ATM.

The true cost is not the same across them. The government pays the remittance fee where payment is made by credit card, while the applicant bears the remittance fee where payment goes through the e-government platform, a virtual account, convenience stores or Web ATM.

Those last two also take a further two to three working days before a payment-success notification arrives, so the wrong method costs both extra money and extra days.

One minor charge deserves recording because it can be used only once in a lifetime: changing the unique identification number on the card costs NT$500, and that number may be changed only once.