Employment Gold Card (Foreign Special Professional)

Earn about NT$160,000 a month and you're in — the Gold Card is basically a high-salary visa.

The salary route is one qualification category inside some fields, not a standalone track. The official finance-field criterion reads "Has previously held or currently holds a position in a foreign state or in the R.O.C. with a most recent monthly salary of at least NT$160,000", and the community FAQ is blunt that "Some industries have a category where applicants with a salary greater than NT$160,000 qualify. However, this is only one category." Several fields have no salary route at all, and the figure is assessed before tax from an official annual tax document divided by 12 — not from a contract or offer letter.

The threshold is about USD 5,700 a month.

The requirement is denominated in NT dollars at NT$160,000 per month and has not been restated in US dollars. Any USD figure in a guide is that writer's conversion at whatever rate applied when they wrote it, and the USD equivalent has moved by hundreds of dollars a month as TWD/USD has swung. Check your own tax documents against NT$160,000, not against a dollar figure you read somewhere.

Gold Card holders get three years of tax breaks, starting the year they arrive.

It is five years, not three, and the clock starts from the tax year in which you first meet every condition — not the year you land or the year the card is issued. The official wording: "for five years counting from the tax year in which they first meet the conditions, half of the part of their salary income above three million NT dollars in each such tax year in which they reside in the State for 183 full days will be excluded from the assessment of individual income tax." If your first two years in Taiwan are under NT$3,000,000 in salary, those years do not burn clock. The benefit also requires that you "has no household registration in the R.O.C. and has for the first time been approved to reside in the R.O.C. for the purpose of work or has obtained an Employment Gold Card", which rules out returnees with past Taiwan residency.

Permanent residency takes five years, your spouse needs an employer to sponsor her, and there are eight Gold Card fields.

Amendments to the Act for the Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals passed the Legislative Yuan on 29 August 2025 and took effect 1 January 2026. They allow "foreigners who earn at least NT$6 million (US$196,046) annually to apply after just one year of residence"; they let "Spouses of special foreign professionals and foreign senior professionals (holders of EGC, ASP-type WP, ARC or Plum Blossom Card)... apply for an individual work permit directly, without requiring employer sponsorship"; they widen the degree shortcut to "graduates from the world's top 1,500 universities — up from the current top 500"; and the field list has grown past the old eight — the official qualification pages now also list Architecture, Biotechnology, Digital, Environment and National Defense. Guides written before late 2025 are describing the previous regime.

If you make a mistake on the form they'll just ask you to fix it.

One specific error kills applications outright: people entering Taiwan visa-free see a 90-day stamp and tick "I entered R.O.C. with a visa of which the duration of stay is more than 60 days". The community FAQ describes exactly this — "You entered Taiwan 'visa-exempt', but when applying you selected the wrong visa/identity category, application refused" — and adds that "Unfortunately, this mistake cannot be fixed, you will have to make a new application and may not get a refund." The official site confirms "The application fee is nonrefundable regardless of the results of your application", so the mistake costs you the full fee and a second 60-business-day wait.

The US-passport overseas fee is a single settled number.

Two pages on the official Gold Card site give different figures for U.S. passport holders applying from abroad. The Application Information page lists "one-year validity, NT$7,605; two-year validity, NT$8,605; three-year validity, NT$9,605", while the payment page in the application flow lists NT$7,790 / NT$8,790 / NT$9,790 for the same category. The surcharge comes from U.S. visa reciprocity and moves; budget the higher number and confirm the exact amount on the payment screen before you pay, since the fee is non-refundable. Non-US foreign passports are consistent at NT$3,700 / NT$4,700 / NT$5,700 on both pages.