Visa information

Taiwan offers three named routes in the 2026 guide: the Employment Gold Card — an open work permit and residence for 1–3 years for professionals in listed fields — an employer-sponsored work permit with an Alien Resident Certificate (ARC), and an entrepreneur visa alongside 90-day visa-free entry for many nationalities. The guide scores Taiwan 50/100 for visa and bureaucracy, and its remote-work line makes the Gold Card the centrepiece: it doubles as a nomad visa, with open work rights and no job needed.

The three routes the guide names

Employment Gold Card — described in the guide as an open work permit and residence for 1–3 years for professionals in listed fields, tested at about $5,700/month salary or equivalent (see below).

Work permit via an employer; Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) — the employer-sponsored route, paired in the guide's wording with the ARC as the residence document.

Entrepreneur visa; 90-day visa-free entry for many nationalities — the guide names the entrepreneur route without criteria or investment figures, and notes visa-free entry without listing which nationalities qualify.

The Gold Card test — what the sources actually say

For the Gold Card, the guide gives the test in one line: professionals in listed fields, at ~$5,700/mo salary or equivalent. It does not enumerate the listed fields, print a field-by-field test, or give a Taiwan-dollar threshold, so this page does not invent one. At the guide's exchange rate of $1 ≈ NT$30, dollar figures convert at roughly that rate for planning.

The guide's remote-work section is what makes the Gold Card unusual among the routes in this series: “Employment Gold Card doubles as a nomad visa: open work rights, no job needed.” The site data carries the identical line. In other words, the one route the sources describe as not requiring an employer is the Gold Card — the employer work permit, by contrast, runs through an employer by definition in the guide's wording.

What the paperwork costs — plan budgets, not government fees

The guide does not list individual government visa fees. What it gives is a bundled “Visa, permits & translations” budget line in each move plan, described in the plans themselves as covering government fees, apostilles and translations — those bundled lines are the only sourced cost figures for the application itself:

• $900 — Affordable plan (you file yourself)
• $1,250 — Mid-range and Retirement plans
• $3,050 — Luxury plan (the plan notes the luxury tier adds an immigration lawyer)

The Retirement plan template carries one further, separate line: $2,350 for “Retirement visa, lawyer & pension certification”, covering an immigration lawyer, apostilled pension letters, medicals and translations. Read that line with the Retirement page's warning: the guide states Taiwan has no retirement visa, so treat the line as the template plan's lawyer-and-certification budget, not as a fee for a route the guide says does not exist.

Application steps and timelines, by tier

The guide builds the application into each plan's timeline rather than printing a single step list. The common sequence across the plans and checklists is:

• Choose the route first and print its requirements; the Affordable checklist starts with “Visa route chosen and requirements printed.”
• Gather and legalise documents — apostilles and translations are named in every tier; the Retirement paperwork stage adds pension or income letters certified and apostilled, a police certificate, a medical, and birth and marriage certificates translated.
• Check your passport — the Affordable checklist requires a passport valid 18+ months.
• Arrange health insurance before you file (see the Hospitals page for the guide's first-year insurance budgets and its National Health Insurance line).
• File — yourself on the Affordable tier, or with a lawyer or agent on the Mid-range, Luxury and Retirement tiers.

Paperwork-stage durations in the guide: ~10 weeks filing yourself (Affordable), ~8 weeks with a lawyer or agent filing (Mid-range), ~6 weeks with a lawyer filing everything (Luxury), and ~14 weeks for the Retirement paperwork stage. After the move, the settle stage includes registering your address and opening a bank account.

Renewals and the path to residency — the honest limit of the guide

Beyond the Gold Card's stated 1–3 years of residence, neither the guide nor the site data gives renewal intervals, the number of years to permanent residence, absence limits, the list of Gold Card fields, or entrepreneur-visa criteria — so this page states none of them. What is sourced is the shape of the system: a Gold Card that bundles an open work permit with 1–3 years of residence and doubles as the nomad route, an employer permit tied to the ARC, and 90-day visa-free entry for many nationalities. Confirm the field list and the current salary test through the official sources below before you rely on them.

Frequently asked questions