The ECCT's 2025 Position Papers, launched today list progress on a number of issues, following the government's adoption of ECCT recommendations (arranged below by committee in alphabetical order).

Issues resolved since the publication of the 2024 Position Papers

Asset Management
Lowering the RBC for the insurance industry to invest in domestic private equity funds: The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) has lowered the risk-based capital (RBC) requirements applicable to insurance companies investing in domestic private equity funds and venture capital businesses.

Banking
Identity verification requirements for current customers: Taiwan's Central Bank (CBC) has removed the requirement for companies, limited partnerships, and sole proprietorships to verify their registration information via the Ministry of Economic Affairs' (MOEA) website.

Cosmetics
Regulatory flexibility for promoting new cosmetics innovation: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has clarified that customised cosmetic products may be sold and used to refill containers and related services may be provided.

Education
Visa transition challenges for foreign nationals: Authorities have confirmed that foreign nationals holding a visa for studying Chinese in Taiwan may apply for a residence visa without having to leave Taiwan, provided they meet the relevant requirements.

Removal of withholding tax on non-competitive educational services from educational providers outside of Taiwan: Authorities have confirmed that not for profit schools can reduce the amount of withholding tax paid for overseas services.

Electrical Engineering & Equipment
Evaluation of the inclusion of four new electrical equipment categories in Regulation 401: The MOEA has said that it has not yet planned to introduce any new regulations on four types of equipment (high-voltage load switches, high-voltage capacitor banks, MOF panels, and protective relays).

Human Resources
Amendments to the Labour Standards Act (LSA) and relevant laws - Exemption of employers' duties to investigate sexual harassment complaints filed by a third party: The amendment to the Sexual Harassment Prevention Act, effective from 8 March 2024, has waived the employer's obligation to initiate sexual harassment investigations that happen outside the workplace and involve third parties as the complainant.

Mobility
Individual mobility – Battery recycling issues: The Ministry of Environment (MOENV) has confirmed that it has no intention of proposing an increase in the battery recycling fee.

Regulatory issues and the business environment - National standards for automobile tyres: The Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection (BSMI) has established national tyre standards with reference to the EU's performance threshold phase 1 and will gradually shift to a more stringent standard after implementation.

Regulatory issues and the business environment - Vehicle tyre measurements: The Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) has agreed to revise Taiwan's tyre measurement method in line with provisions in EU Regulation (EU) 2021/535.

Retail & Distribution
Transparency and consistency of government policies - Improving import efficiency - Customs clearance for pre-approved products: The FDA has included pre-approved products, including special dietary foods, and food in capsule/tablet form in the scope of fast-track reviews (electronic operations), which has improved the overall efficiency of customs clearance.

Transparency and consistency of government policies - Improving import efficiency - Transparency of import documentation requirements: In 2024, members have not encountered issues of FDA border inspectors requiring supporting documents not based on safety reasons or regulatory requirements. However, specific food ingredients known to naturally contain preservatives still require supporting documents.

Mostly resolved issues
Although not completely resolved, owing to sufficient progress made, the following issues have mostly resolved.

Agro-Chemical
Review schedule and administrative efficiency for pesticide registrations: The review time for new pesticides submitted to the Pesticide Advisory Council now averages 11-16 months from fee payment to submission. In addition, the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) has implemented measures to shorten the pesticide registration period by four months.

Asset Management
Regulatory requirements for robo-advisors: The FSC issued a directive allowing investment advisory businesses to provide automated investment advisory services under certain conditions. In addition, the Securities Investment Trust and Consulting Association (SITCA) has issued guidelines allowing for the use of mobile IDs for identity verification in online securities investment advisory contracts. While not fully resolved and still subject to continuous discussions with the competent authorities, the issue has not been repeated.

Better Living
Equality of treatment for foreign nationals residing in Taiwan – Disability certification for foreign residents: The Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) has authorised local governments to extend the issuance of disability certification to permanent foreign residents with disabilities from the US, the UK, Canada, France and Singapore, in addition to Japan, with applications from nationals of other countries evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Personal safety – Making Taiwan's roads safer for all road users: The enactment of the Road Traffic Safety Basic Act at the end of 2023 demonstrates the government's resolve to improve road safety, in particular with regard to safeguarding the lives of pedestrians.

Healthcare Sustainability
Full reimbursements for gene testing in conjunction with NGS-based companion diagnostics: The MOHW announced that next-generation sequencing (NGS) testing will be prioritised for cancer types that have corresponding National Health Insurance (NHI) treatment medications and clear effectiveness based on the test results.

Constructing a sustainable environment to incubate a digital healthcare industry: The MOHW established the Digital Health Steering Committee to promote the development of digital health, set open and unified standards for the medical information industry, and improved healthcare quality through the application of big data and AI. In addition, the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), in collaboration with the MOEA, MOHW, Academia Sinica, and the FSC, is actively promoting precision health industry policies, focused on AI and data-driven health services and products.

Insurance
Relaxation of the financial instruments that can be used in mandate accounts for investment insurance policies: The Insurance Bureau (IB) has agreed to study relaxing the usage of leveraged exchange traded funds (ETFs) and inverse ETFs in mandate accounts.

Definition of "managers" in new regulation: Regulators have stated that the definition of "managers" follows the relevant provisions of the Company Act and adopts a substantive identification method.

Intellectual Property Rights
Trade secret issues - Access to case file and evidence in trade secret criminal cases: Authorities have recently amended the Intellectual Property Case Adjudication Act (IPCAA) and Guidelines for Court Handling of Trade Secret Cases. Although this has not fully resolved the issue, the committee may collect more information on the court practices following the law amendments and, if necessary, raise this issue again next year.

Medical Device
Reimbursement issues – Cross-government administrative integration and efficiency for unreimbursed medical devices: For devices under review for reimbursement or those that will not be reimbursed, medical institutions can allow patients to purchase the devices out of pocket. Starting from 1 January 2024, medical device licence holders have been allowed to apply for the reimbursement of new medical service items and new medical devices at the same time. In addition, the National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) has announced that it plans to establish a national medical expenses information platform project (全國性醫療費用資訊平台), with the aim of simplification and acceleration of the self-paid review and approval process in each city/county health bureau to speed up access to new medical services and new medical devices.

Project & Procurement
English versions of procurement contracts: The Public Construction Commission (PCC) has completed the English translations of important terms in several standard templates, while some government agencies have provided English tender documents for major engineering projects. In addition, to standardise procurement terminology, the PCC has created a Chinese-English glossary of key terms for government procurement tender templates.

Partially resolved issues
Although not sufficiently resolved, progress has been made on the following issues:

Better Living
Equality of treatment for foreign nationals residing in Taiwan – Dual citizenship for long-term permanent residents: Article 5 of the Nationality Act was amended to relax the requirement for foreign high-level professionals applying for naturalisation from the previous requirement of residing legally for 183 days annually for five consecutive years to either two consecutive years or five years without needing to meet the 183-day annual residency requirement. However, the standard to apply for dual nationality remains overly restrictive.

Attracting & retaining talent – Employment Gold Cards: The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) has taken steps to ensure Gold Card holders' applications for establishing businesses and registering companies are given priority.

Cosmetics
Product Information File (PIF) audit and execution standard - Implementation of PIF audits: The MOHW is providing education and training on PIF management and requires inspectors to present credentials during inspections. However, authorities have yet to provide specific guidelines on inspection standards, requirements and procedures for inspections.

Education
Building a bilingual Taiwan: Authorities have undertaken a number of measures to improve bilingual proficiency in government, such as making English training courses available to all civil servants, while as of 2024, English proficiency has been included as an important factor in the promotion evaluations for civil servants. However, current proficiency levels and the education system leave room for improvement. 

Electrical Engineering & Equipment
Upgrading Taiwan's switchgear industry: The Energy Administration (EA, under the MOEA) has undertaken to explore imposing a sunset mechanism for the CNS 3990 standard. However, products meeting the new standard (CNS15156-200) still account for less than 20% of equipment being used in the market.

Human Resources
Modern workforce and digital economy workers - Remote working arrangements: Taiwan has signed and enforced 35 tax treaties, including with 16 European countries, which help address double taxation issues for residents of treaty partner countries who earn employment income in Taiwan. However, aspects of the Labour Standards Act (LSA) are not fit for the purpose of the needs of remote workers who require minimal supervision and have considerable flexibility in how they arrange their work and private lives.

Family friendly policies - Encouraging enterprises to provide childcare spaces: The MOF has confirmed that businesses, regardless of whether they have established an employee welfare committee, may fully recognize the costs of providing childcare-related employee benefits as expenses in accordance with regulations. However, subsidies and tax incentives are still insufficient to encourage enterprises to provide childcare spaces and facilities in their workplaces.

Family friendly policies - Foreign domestic workers in Taiwan: In accordance with the directives from the Executive Yuan in September 2023, the government will continue to assess the feasibility of relaxing the application conditions for allowing foreign domestic workers to come to Taiwan to care for children. However, for now, legal thresholds to hire foreign domestic workers in Taiwan are too high.

Amendments to the Labour Pension Act (LPA) - Allowing foreign national employees to be enrolled in the New Pension Scheme: The MOF has announced that for the 2024 tax year, the fixed exemption amount for retirement income is NT$198,000 multiplied by the years of service for lump-sum retirement payments, which is close to the recommended NT$200,000 exemption level. However, with the exception of some APRC holders, the new pension scheme excludes foreign nationals.

Medical Device
Regulatory approval issues - Streamlining registration for the same product from different manufacturers: The FDA has specified flexible criteria for the review and approval process in cases of devices where parts of the manufacturing production process occurs in countries other than where the manufacturer is located. However, the FDA has not clearly stipulated the relevant regulations for applicants to follow.

Regulatory approval issues – Documentary simplification and predictability of the registration review timeline: The FDA has increased the number of items applicable for documentary simplification to 140 items in Appendix 3 of the "Regulations Governing Issuance of Medical Device License, Listing and Annual Declaration" but this only accounts for about 15% of the 943 Class 2 categories.

Mobility
Individual mobility - Online process for residential EV charging equipment inspections: Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) has announced that it will complete the evaluation of the committee's recommendation to digitise the drawing review phase of inspections in November 2024. Currently the review process takes several months, and there is no way for applicants to check their status.

Regulatory issues and the business environment - English translations of MOTC regulations and requirements: Authorities have made progress in providing English translations of certain regulations. However, some announcements and related clarifications are not translated into English.

Retail & Distribution
Transparency and consistency of government policies - Implementation of new regulations and standards - Application of new standards to existing products: Consensus has been achieved with the EA to: 1) Engage stakeholders on discussions of the details and timeline for regulatory measures before amendments or the establishment of standards; 2) Implement a 60-day review and commentary period following the announcement of draft regulations or standards and 3) Provide a grace period of two to three years for implementation.

Transparency and consistency of government policies - English translations of Taiwan standards and testing methods: The BSMI plans to add the remarks IDT (identical), MOD (modified) or NEQ (not equivalent) for CNS standards. However, there are still some CNS standards that do not have English translations.

Transparency and consistency of government policies - Incorporating regulatory impact assessments in policy making: The National Development Council (NDC) has noted that the need for a Regulatory Impact Assessments (RIA) has been implemented in the draft "Resource Recycling Utilization Act" but the analysis methods and progress of implementation have not been clarified.

Regulatory framework issues for food products - Use of claims of "natural", "no artificial flavour" or "no chemical flavours" (labelled "Use of natural flavours and colourants" in last year's paper): The FDA has suggested that if the usage of "natural flavour" is in compliance with the definition that has already been announced by the FDA, product labels may claim  "use natural flavours" or "use no chemical flavours". However, it remains to be seen if these terms will be accepted in practice.

Tax
Streamlining withholding tax payment procedures for companies: Both the online tax-payment channels for companies to pay withholding taxes have limitations while processing tax payments is time-consuming and labour-intensive.

Taiwan's position and schedule for the adoption of Pillar Two Global Anti-Base Erosion ("GloBE") Rules: While Taiwan will incorporate the concept of the threshold for the GloBE Rules into the domestic Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) regime, the calculation basis of Taiwan's AMT regime still differs from the GloBE Rules.