Skip to main content

How to file taxes online using Alien Citizen Digital Certificate[外籍人士自然人憑證]


 Taiwan offers a smart card to adult foreign residents that can be used to verify their identity online. This allows some government services previously only available in person to be provided online, including:
Sounds great! However, the system relies on some ironically insecure/outdated technology, a mishmash of different browser plugins and very few support staff know about its existence. Here's a tip on how to use yours...

How to pay Taiwan income taxes online

I've successfully paid taxes online for the past few years using this method. It is straightforward, thanks to the automated data download powered by the Digital Citizen Certificate.
  1. Get a Digital Citizen Certificate and set it up in your card reader
  2. Change your computer's regional format to be "Taiwan".
  3. Each year, visit National Tax Bureau's Income Tax for Aliens website , download and install the setup file for the latest "offline"/Windows application.
  4. The application will launch automatically. If it doesn't, find "
    外僑綜合所得稅電子結算申報繳稅系統(用戶端版)" on the menu and launch it.
  5. Select your language (the English translation is good) and acknowledge the warning about the regional format
  6. Select the filing year (eg in May 2019, you are probably filing the 2018 financial year), and "Taxpayer"
  7. Put your Digital Citizen Certificate in the card reader,  select "Login by Aliens Citizen Digital Certificate", click next, and OK the warnings
  8. Enter your IC Card PIN when prompted, and wait … 60 seconds or so
  9. You’re in. Enter your ARC number and click through.
  10. You can see 7 options to do with manipulating data. Ignore all by the top one, "Download the Income or Deduction Tax Return data". This magic gathers all of your reported salary, withholding data, bank interest, medical expenses as well as your biographical information and enters it into your tax return.
  11. Wait ... Be presented with 4 PDFs, one at a time. The purpose of the PDFs is to show what data was downloaded. You can save them, print them or just close them - they are handy to have, but keeping them is not required for your return.
  12. (Generally) tick all the boxes and Import the data.
  13. You're now in the main tax application, which has been filled out with all of your information.
  14. Carefully fill out each page, with the advice of all of your lawyers and accountants, print a trial balance, triplecheck it and then move on to the calculation and upload tab
  15.  Your card reader is going to serve double duty at this step. Get your bank card ready. After making the declaration, you will be asked to put your bank card into the reader for the payment. Later you will be asked to put your Digital Citizen Certificate back in for the submission. Pay careful attention to swap the cards as needed.
ProTip: Some banks use different cards for their online banking login and ATM functions. If this applies to you, you will need to make sure you are using your ATM card for the payment and not your internet banking login card. Otherwise, the process will appear to work, until the payment is declined.

What about the Linux/Mac version?

There is also an 'online'/'web-based' version of this process that similarly takes a Digital Citizen Certificate. It does work on Linux, using the plugin found on the MOICA website. The plugin launches a small web app locally on your machine that can be used to bridge the PCSD functions into the MOI framework.

However, this version of the e-Filing is still under development and has limited payment options and doesn't support all features of the 'offline' application.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to transfer money from Taiwan without going to the bank

We live in a digital age. The Taiwanese banking system ... a little less so. Transferring money overseas typically involves a visit to the bank between 9am and 3pm. You'll queue, fill out an outbound remittance form in duplicate, stamp and sign some things and just generally wait while staff do their best with the unfamiliar procedure. There is another way.* * for transfers < 500,000 TWD, to accounts you've previously set up in a special way :(  Background: Remittance Classifications One of the reasons for the myriad of complicated forms when dealing with foreign exchange in Taiwan is the precise codification of transfer types required by the Central Bank. Your knowledge of the existence of these two documents will boost your standing above that of the average banker: 匯出匯款之分類及說明  Code and Description of Outward Remittance Classification 匯入匯款之分類及說明 Code and Description of Inward Remittance Classification These are updated every few years, with new versions fo...
Post a Comment
Read more

How to flash Seeed Wio-WM1110 Dev Kit with Meshtastic

The Seeed Wio-WM1110 Dev Kit is an nRF52840-based LoRa® transceiver with built-in GPS, Temperature/Humidity sensor and supports solar and battery power. Unfortunately, unlike many Meshtastic devices, this board cannot be flashed using USB. Instead, you require an external device that can connect via SWDIO. Luckily, if you have a Raspberry Pi around this is surprisingly straightforward. 1. Set up Wiring Connect GPIO pin 11 on your Raspbery Pi to the CLK pin on the Wio-WM1110. Connect GPIO pin 8 on your Raspbery Pi to the DIO pin on the Wio-WM1110. Ensure you get the GPIO numbers correct. Plug in your Raspberry Pi to USB power. Plug in the Wio-WM1110 to USB for power. 2. Install OpenOCD OpenOCD is the program we'll use for communicating with the Wio-WM1110. Install it on your Raspberry Pi. $ sudo apt update $ sudo apt install libtool autoconf automake texinfo telnet gdb-multiarch git $ git clone git://repo.or.cz/openocd.git $ cd openocd/ $ ./bootstrap $ ./configure --enable-bcm2835...
Post a Comment
Read more

How to play Monster Hunter: World on Linux

The release of Monster Hunter: World on PC has broken records. Powered by the unfamiliar MT Engine, Linux users were worried that they might miss out on the experience. Luckily, some got it working on day 1 (hat tip Vahron and all the users on the reddit thread). Here's a way to get it working :) Upgrade to Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver. The previous release, 17.10 Artful Aardvark didn't work for me. Install lutris . Lutris is a launcher for games on Linux. There are so many different wine versions and configuration options. Lutris manages them all for you and has installers with 'known good' configurations. Open lutris and install the 'Wine Steam' runner. (Lutris -> Manage Runners -> Wine Steam -> Install). This will let Lutris run games via a wine-installed version of steam Manage the wine version of lutris to install esync-3.13 . (Lutris-> Manage Runners -> Wine -> Manager versions -> Tick esync 3.13). This will make the latest high...
Post a Comment
Read more