Hire Employees in Taiwan: 2026 EOR, Payroll and Employment Guide

Your own entity means incorporating a subsidiary under the Company Act with foreign-investment approval, or registering a branch of the foreign company. Both can employ staff and sponsor work permits, and both commit you to local corporate tax, accounting and annual filings. A representative office is limited to liaison activities — it cannot conduct revenue-generating business, so it is rarely a hiring vehicle.

An Employer of Record inverts the sequence: GX’s Taiwanese entity signs the local employment contract, runs payroll, withholds tax and makes labor insurance, National Health Insurance and pension contributions — while you direct the employee’s day-to-day work. That is what compresses time-to-hire from months to one or two weeks.

Break-even rule of thumb: EOR fees begin to exceed the running cost of a small Taiwanese entity somewhere between 15 and 20 employees. Model both before committing — see EOR vs Entity for the full comparison, and plan any later migration so employees keep seniority.

The statutory minimum wage is NT$29,500 a month and NT$196 an hour, effective 1 January 2026 — a single national rate with no regional variation, and the tenth consecutive annual increase.

Salaries must be paid at least monthly in New Taiwan dollars, with itemised payslips showing gross pay, each statutory deduction and net pay. Month-end and the fifth of the following month are the common pay dates. Payroll records must be retained for five years.

Two features catch foreign employers. First, contributions are calculated on insured salary grade tables published by the Bureau of Labor Insurance, not on actual salary — pay falling between two grades rounds up to the higher one. Second, the insured salary must reflect actual total compensation including fixed allowances. Under-reporting it is a frequent finding in labour inspections.

A thirteenth-month bonus before Lunar New Year is customary and near-universal, though not statutory. Budget it as a one-twelfth monthly accrual. Once promised in an offer, it becomes contractual.

Four representative profiles, costed with the 2026 contribution rates above and a customary 13th-month accrual. Salaries are illustrative market midpoints, not GX operating data — use them to see how the on-cost percentage behaves as pay rises, not as a salary benchmark for a specific role. For real market data on your roles, ask for a costing.

Before the brackets apply, a single employed resident deducts NT$464,000 in 2026 — the NT$101,000 personal exemption, NT$136,000 standard deduction and NT$227,000 salary special deduction. The monthly withholding threshold rises to NT$90,500.

Qualifying foreign special professionals, including Employment Gold Card holders, may exclude 50% of salary above NT$3 million from taxable income for their first five years of Taiwan tax residency.

VAT is 5% and applies to entity-model invoicing, not payroll.

Employment is indefinite-term by default; fixed-term contracts are valid only for temporary, short-term, seasonal or specific work. Written bilingual contracts with a controlling Chinese version are best practice. Probation is not regulated by the LSA but is lawful by agreement — three months is customary.

Probation is not a carve-out. The Ministry of Labor’s position is that dismissing a probationer still requires statutory grounds under Article 11 or 12, and the notice and severance provisions of Articles 16 and 17 apply in full. Budget for both. Social insurance and dismissal-cause rules apply from day one of probation, exactly as they do afterwards.

Under LSA art. 24, weekday overtime pays an additional one-third of the regular hourly rate for the first two hours and an additional two-thirds thereafter — commonly quoted as 1.34× and 1.67×. Rest-day work carries higher premiums, and work on a mandatory day off or public holiday requires double pay and/or substitute rest.

Employees are entitled to 11 consecutive hours of rest between shifts, reducible to 8 by specific agreement, and a 30-minute break for every 4 hours of continuous work. Employers with 30 or more staff must report overtime extensions to the local competent authority.

2026 brings 16 paid statutory holiday days, including the multi-day Lunar New Year break and holidays added by the May 2025 amendment — Teachers’ Day (28 Sep), Taiwan Retrocession Day (25 Oct) and Constitution Day (25 Dec). Work on a public holiday requires double pay or a substitute day off.

Maternity: 8 weeks, fully paid with 6+ months’ tenure (half pay below); from January 2026 the state adds maternity benefits and a childbirth subsidy totalling NT$100,000 per child. Paternity / pregnancy check-up accompaniment: 7 paid days. Parental leave: up to 2 years unpaid per child under 3, with an Employment Insurance allowance of 80% of insured salary for up to 6 months per parent. Sick leave: up to 30 days per year at half pay without hospitalisation; up to 1 year within 2 years if hospitalised.

There is no at-will employment. Employers may terminate with notice and severance only on Article 11 grounds (closure, losses, restructuring, force majeure, demonstrated incompetence) or summarily without severance on Article 12 grounds (gross misconduct), within strict time limits. Larger reductions trigger the Mass Redundancy Act.

• Notice: 10 days (3 months – 1 year of service), 20 days (1–3 years), 30 days (3+ years) — or pay in lieu.
• Severance (post-2005 pension system): half an average monthly wage per year of service, capped at 6 months, paid within 30 days.
• Old-system employees: one month per year, uncapped — check enrolment history on takeover hires.
• Job-search leave: during the notice period the employee may take up to two days a week of paid leave to look for work (LSA art.16) — a real and often overlooked cost.

Sequence for a sponsored hire: work permit from the Workforce Development Agency, then a resident visa at a Taiwan mission, then an ARC from the National Immigration Agency within 30 days of arrival. Family members obtain dependent ARCs.

Employer-sponsored permits commonly take two to eight weeks depending on documentation and agency load. Build the longer figure into start dates rather than the best case.

R&D, support, engineering and internal roles are generally low-risk. Sales, business development and deal-making roles are where exposure arises. Practical controls: keep contract execution offshore, limit local signing authority, define the local role narrowly in writing, and take Taiwanese tax advice before the first commercial hire.

Work backwards from the start date. For a local hire through an EOR, one to two weeks is realistic once documents are ready. For a foreign national requiring a work permit, add four to eight weeks for the permit, resident visa and Alien Resident Certificate.

Confirm three things before making an offer: whether the candidate has the right to work, whether the salary clears the NT$47,971 monthly threshold if a work permit is needed, and whether the role involves concluding contracts locally, which raises permanent-establishment questions.

Insurance enrolment must be effective from day one. Labor, Employment, Occupational Accident and National Health Insurance all start on the first working day, and the employer is liable for any benefit an unenrolled employee would have received.