Employer of Record Taiwan: 6 Providers Compared

The first Taipei offer I priced, I did the lazy thing. I took the US habit of adding roughly ten percent for payroll tax, applied it to a New Taiwan dollar salary, and told myself Taiwan was cheap. The number was wrong, and it was wrong in a direction I had never seen before.

Taiwanese employer cost is four separate programs plus two small levies, and every one of them is charged on a graded table with its own ceiling. That shape has a consequence US founders rarely expect: the load is heaviest on your junior hires and lightest on your senior ones. An employer of record takes the whole apparatus off your desk by employing the person through its own Taiwanese entity.

What a provider cannot do is change the arithmetic underneath. This guide covers what Taiwanese law requires before any vendor is involved, what a hire costs on top of gross salary, and six providers compared on the prices they actually publish. Every legal and contribution figure below was checked against Taiwanese government sources in September 2026.

How an employer of record works in Taiwan

An employer of record employs your Taiwanese hire through a Taiwanese entity it already holds, so you can put someone on a compliant local payroll without registering a company in Taiwan. You choose the person and the pay. The provider signs the contract and takes on the employer obligations.

The Taiwanese mechanics have one feature US buyers consistently underestimate. Getting one person onto payroll means registrations with two agencies across four separate programs, not a single enrollment. Labor insurance, employment insurance, occupational accident insurance, and the pension account all sit with the Bureau of Labor Insurance, health insurance sits with a different agency entirely, and each runs on its own graded table.

The right-hand column is the part vendors underplay. A provider removes administration and legal exposure, not judgment. You still recruit, still decide, and still own whatever onboarding experience the person actually gets in their first month.

Do you actually need one for Taiwan?

Only if the person is genuinely an employee and you have no Taiwanese entity. Those are two separate questions, and the first one decides most of the money, because engaging a genuine freelancer costs a fraction of what employing someone does.

The classification question is the expensive one. If the honest answer is freelancer, the right purchase is a contractor management product at $25 to $49 per person per month rather than an employment arrangement at ten to twenty times that. If the honest answer is employee, and you are setting hours and directing the work, keep reading. Guessing in your own favor is how a misclassification problem starts.

The four statutory programs an employer pays into

Employer contributions in Taiwan come from four programs: labor insurance and employment insurance charged together, occupational accident insurance paid by the employer alone, national health insurance, and the pension account. Two small levies ride alongside them, and every base is a table figure rather than the salary itself.

Read the second and third columns together, because the headline rates mislead on their own. Labor insurance looks like the big number at 11.5 percent, but the employer pays 70 percent of it on a base that stops at NT$45,800. Add employment insurance and the two together never cost more than about NT$4,008 a month, no matter what you pay someone.

Health insurance is where the arithmetic stops being obvious. Article 27 of the National Health Insurance Act splits the premium 30 percent to the insured, 60 percent to the employer, and 10 percent to the government, and the National Health Insurance Committee at the Ministry of Health and Welfare held the general rate at 5.17 percent for 2026. Sixty percent of 5.17 percent is 3.1 percent, and that is not what you pay.

The employer is billed for an average number of dependents rather than the real ones, so that nobody is penalized for hiring a parent of three. The National Health Insurance Administration's premium contribution table for 2026 charges every employer on 1.56 people per employee, which turns the employer line into 4.84 percent of the insured amount. On the NT$45,800 rung that is NT$2,216 a month rather than NT$1,420.

The supplementary premium is the line nobody mentions in a sales call. Under Article 34 of the same act, an employer owes a supplementary premium on the difference between the salary it actually paid in a month and the total of its employees' insured amounts. Article 33 ties that rate to the growth in the general premium rate and has the ministry announce it each year, so take the current figure from your provider rather than from an old quote. Bonuses, overtime, and any salary above the top rung all create that gap, which makes a bonus month more expensive than the headline suggests.

The last item is the smallest and the easiest to forget. The Bureau of Labor Insurance collects an arrear wage payment fund levy of 0.025 percent of insured salary from every employer, and the fund advances unpaid wages, pensions, and severance to workers when a business goes under. On a capped base it is about NT$11 a month, which is less than the time you would spend arguing about it.

The pension account and what severance costs

The pension contribution is the largest employer line on most professional salaries in Taiwan, at a minimum of 6 percent of the monthly contribution wage, and severance is capped at six months of average wages. Neither is negotiable, and the pension is paid into an account that belongs to the worker rather than to you.

The Bureau of Labor Insurance describes the current system plainly: an employer must contribute at least 6 percent of the worker's monthly wage into an individual account it holds centrally, the account is portable between jobs, and it survives the business closing. Workers may add up to a further 6 percent of their own wages voluntarily, which costs you nothing.

That design removes a whole category of work that US employers take for granted. There is no plan to select, no vesting schedule to write, no match formula to explain, and no fund administrator to supervise. What remains is one decision: whether you contribute the statutory 6 percent or more, because the floor is a floor rather than a ceiling.

The pension line also overtakes labor insurance surprisingly early. Labor insurance stops growing at the NT$45,800 rung while the pension keeps rising to NT$150,000, so the two cross at a salary of roughly NT$67,000 a month. Above that point every raise you give moves the pension line and leaves the insurance line exactly where it was.

Severance sits in the Labor Pension Act rather than in the Labor Standards Act for anyone hired today. Article 12 sets it at half a month of average wages for every full year of employment, pro rata for a partial year, not exceeding six months of average wages in total, and payable within 30 days of the termination.

Two practical points follow. Average wages are measured over the final six months, so a raise, a bonus that counts as wages, or a heavy overtime period shortly before an exit all raise the settlement. And the six-month cap exists only because of the current pension system, which is why anything you read about a Taiwanese employee with 20 years of service does not describe the person you are about to hire.

What a Taiwanese hire costs on top of gross

One employee on NT$90,000 a month costs about NT$14,140 a month in employer contributions, or roughly 15.7 percent on top of gross, before the platform fee is added. That is NT$1,080,000 of salary and about NT$169,680 of statutory cost across a full year.

The occupational accident line assumes an office-based business at the bottom of the industry table, 0.12 percent, plus the flat 0.07 percent commuting rate. A warehouse or a workshop sits higher up that table, so confirm the business category your provider registered before you treat the figure as settled.

Now the part that makes Taiwan unusual. Because four bases stop at four different points, the employer load is a declining percentage rather than a flat one. The same package that costs you 19.9 percent on a junior salary costs 13.6 percent on a senior one, which is the opposite of the pattern most US founders carry in their heads.

Read that table before you decide how to split a budget. Two junior hires at NT$45,000 cost more in employer contributions than one senior hire at NT$90,000, even though the salary bill is identical. Whether that changes your plan is a hiring question rather than a payroll one, but it belongs in the conversation.

None of the numbers above is a provider decision. Taiwan is unusually predictable once you know the monthly salary, which is a genuine advantage over markets where a sector agreement can move the floor under you mid-year. The true cost of employing someone is set by Taiwanese law long before you pick a vendor, and on a senior salary the platform fee is a bigger line than labor insurance.

The wage floor and the graded tables

Taiwan's minimum wage is NT$29,500 a month and NT$196 an hour from 1 January 2026, with no regional variation and no exemption for small employers. The Ministry of Labor announced the increase after the minimum wage committee met, taking the monthly figure up from NT$28,590 and the hourly figure up from NT$190.

The ministry puts the increase at NT$910 a month, or 3.18 percent, and estimates that about 2.47 million workers are affected. For the roles US companies usually hire in Taiwan the floor is not binding at all, so the number matters for a different reason.

The bottom of every contribution table is pegged to the minimum wage. When the floor moves, the lowest full-time rung of the labor insurance, health insurance, and pension tables moves with it, and the bureau reassigns anyone sitting below the new figure without waiting for the employer to file anything. That is why a January increase quietly raises the employer cost of every low-paid role in the country on the same day.

The tables also round upward, which is the detail that makes a quote look wrong when you check it. A NT$90,000 salary is contributed on the NT$92,100 rung for health insurance and pension, because that is the first step at or above the salary. On the labor insurance side it is contributed on NT$45,800, because that is where the table ends.

Hours, leave, and ending employment in Taiwan

The Taiwanese working week is capped at 40 hours, annual leave starts at three days after six months, notice runs from 10 to 30 days by tenure, and there is no at-will employment. None of that is negotiable downward, and no provider can soften it for you.

The Labor Standards Act sets regular hours at eight a day and 40 a week, gives every worker two days off in seven, and prices overtime at a third above the hourly rate for the first two hours and two thirds above it after that. Overtime is capped at 46 hours a month, or 54 hours a month and 138 in any three months where a union or a labor-management conference has approved it.

Leave accrues faster than the opening number suggests. Three days after six months looks thin next to a US package, but it reaches seven days at one year, 14 at three years, and 15 at five, and anything the employee does not take is paid out rather than forfeited. Matching the statutory ladder exactly is legal and will read as ungenerous to a candidate comparing your offer with a domestic one.

Ending employment is the part that carries real risk rather than real money. An employer may terminate with notice only on the grounds in Article 11, which cover business suspension or transfer, operating losses or contraction, force majeure, a change of business that requires a smaller workforce, and a worker who is clearly unable to perform the duties of the position. Summary dismissal needs one of the misconduct grounds in Article 12.

Fixed-term contracts are not the escape hatch either. The act allows them only for temporary, short-term, seasonal, or specific work, and says that a contract for continuous work has to be non-fixed-term. Hiring an engineer on a rolling twelve-month contract to keep the exit simple does not produce a simple exit. It produces a non-fixed-term contract with extra paperwork.

One more Taiwanese feature deserves a direct answer, because no vendor page raises it. The Labor Standards Act regulates labor dispatch specifically, and an employer of record arrangement can resemble dispatch from the outside: one company employs the worker, another directs the work. Whether a particular arrangement is dispatch is a question for a Taiwanese lawyer, not a vendor FAQ.

It matters because the dispatch provisions reach past the employer. Article 17-1 bars a dispatch-requiring entity from interviewing or naming a specific dispatched worker before the dispatching entity has signed a contract with that person, and gives the worker 90 days to demand a contract with the requiring entity if it happens anyway. Article 22-1 makes the requiring entity pay unpaid wages the dispatching entity has failed to pay, and Article 63-1 makes both jointly liable for occupational accident compensation.

The practical version is short. Ask your provider, in writing, how it characterizes the arrangement under Taiwanese law, and what sequence it expects between your interviews and its contract with the candidate. A provider that has run Taiwanese payroll before will have an answer ready. One that has not will tell you the question does not apply.

Employer of record providers for Taiwan compared

Six providers, compared on the fees they publish rather than the fees a salesperson mentions. All six publish an employment rate, all six publish a contractor rate, and none of them names the Taiwanese entity that would employ your hire.

The published band runs from $199 to $699 per employee monthly, a spread of about $6,000 a year on a single Taiwanese hire. The more useful differentiator in Taiwan is not price. It is whether the provider will tell you, in writing, which entity employs your person, what pension rate the contract uses, and how it handles the dispatch question above.

The six providers reviewed

Deel publishes every rate on one page, which in this category is still not universal, and at $599 per employee monthly it sits at the market anchor rather than the top of it. For a US company making a first Taiwanese hire, the practical draw is that employment and contractor management live in one account, so the common shape of one employee in Taipei and three contractors elsewhere does not need two vendors.

Press on Taiwan specifically. The vendor claims employment in more than 130 countries without naming the entities, and the answer for Taiwan decides who is accountable if a labor insurance enrollment is filed late or a severance calculation is challenged. Ask for the Taiwanese contract template as well, read the pension contribution clause and the intellectual property assignment, and confirm whether the platform fee changes in a month where a bonus is paid.

Papaya Global publishes a starting rate of $499 per employee monthly, below the $599 anchor, and prices employment, contractor of record, contractor payments, and managed payroll separately so you buy the piece you need. The platform is built around payments and reporting rather than employment alone.

That reporting bias suits Taiwan better than it suits most markets. Employer cost here is six separate lines running on four different bases with four different ceilings, plus a supplementary health premium that only appears in months where you pay above the insured amounts. A report that separates them is genuinely useful at budget time, and it is the fastest way to check whether a quote used the right rungs. The caution is the words in front of the number, because a starting rate is not a Taiwan quote.

Remote states on its pricing page that it directly owns all of its legal entities and never relies on third parties to employ workers. That is the vendor's own claim rather than a verified fact, but if it holds for Taiwan it buys something specific: one named party to file the enrollments, hold the insured salary declarations, and answer to a labor inspector.

The second argument is the exit. Payroll on its own costs $29 per employee monthly for companies that already hold the local entity, and that is the product you move onto after you register in Taiwan, which removes one migration from the plan. The trade is price: at $699 per employee monthly it sits at the top of the published range, roughly $1,200 a year above the anchor on a single hire.

Atlas HXM publishes a starting rate of $599 per employee monthly and describes its entities as owned and operated rather than partner-based, which puts it in the same conversation as the option above it at a lower published price. It also publishes a separate rate of $399 per employee monthly for eligible nonprofits, which is rare enough in this category to mention.

What to establish is whether the owned model extends to Taiwan. Providers commonly own entities in their largest markets and lean on partners elsewhere, and Taiwan is large enough that ownership is plausible but not safe to assume. Ask for the name of the employing entity and its uniform business number, and ask who signs the labor insurance enrollment. Its pricing page also compares rival rates, which is worth reading as marketing rather than as data.

Oyster publishes its rate, gives contractors a free first 30 days before charging $29, and states that setup, onboarding, and offboarding are included in the subscription rather than billed separately. That suits a founder who wants one Taiwanese employee and no standing relationship to manage, and the buying flow is the most straightforward in this group.

The hourly advisory rate is the tell about the model. People partner services are metered at $300 an hour, so guidance is a product rather than an included service. In Taiwan that lands badly at exactly the wrong moment, because a dismissal has to rest on one of the statutory grounds and be reported to the authorities before the person leaves, and that is the conversation where you want a person rather than a ticket.

RemoFirst publishes the lowest fee in this group by a wide margin, starting at $199 per employee monthly, and states that no setup, onboarding, or termination fees apply, with no minimum contract term and no minimum headcount. On one Taiwanese hire that gap is roughly $4,800 a year against the anchor and $6,000 against the top tier, which decides the business case at seed stage.

The words in front of the number are doing the work, and Taiwan is a market where they matter. Ask for the Taiwan figure in writing, ask who holds the entity, ask what the deposit is, and ask what pension rate the contract uses. A low monthly fee paired with a large deposit is not a low-cost arrangement, it is a cash-flow arrangement.

A provider or your own Taiwanese company

Use a provider while your Taiwanese headcount is small, and model your own company once it is not. The crossover arrives sooner than founders expect, usually at three or four employees, because the fee is charged per person while the cost of running a company is mostly fixed.

The third row is a warning rather than a recommendation. Engaging someone in Taiwan as a freelancer while setting their hours and directing their methods is the fastest route to a relationship being treated as employment after the fact, with contributions and entitlements calculated backward across the whole engagement. The product you buy does not decide the classification. The relationship does.

There is also a question for your tax adviser that has nothing to do with which provider you choose: whether the way your Taiwanese person works could create a taxable presence for your US company regardless of who employs them. Signing authority and customer-facing sales are the usual concerns, engineering rarely is, and the question belongs in the file before it belongs in an audit. If you later move the person onto your own payroll, treat it as a change of employer rather than a data migration, because continuity of service and the pension account both need handling.

What to ask before you sign

Before you choose

FirstHR is not an employer of record. We hold no entity in Taiwan, employ nobody on your behalf, and take on no employer liability, so if you need someone on a Taiwanese payroll next month, the providers above are the category to shortlist. FirstHR is an onboarding and HR platform, not a payroll provider.

This section exists because the provider decision and the HR decision are separate, and people conflate them. A provider handles the legal employment. It does not run the first week, own the signed documents, deliver the training the role requires, or keep employee records in a state where you can find them a year later. In Taiwan that last point carries weight, because a termination on capability grounds rests on the record you built while things were still going well.

That layer stays yours whichever route you take, and it is what we built FirstHR for: onboarding with e-signature, document management, training with completion tracking, and an employee record that holds together for a small business without a dedicated HR person, at a flat $98 to $198 per month regardless of headcount.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an employer of record in Taiwan?

The company named as employer on the Taiwanese labor contract, the payslip, and the insurance enrollments, while the person works for you in every practical sense. It already holds a Taiwanese entity, registers the new hire across all four statutory programs, runs payroll in local currency, and carries the legal exposure that a US company with no Taiwanese presence cannot carry itself.

How much does an employer of record cost in Taiwan?

Published fees among the six providers here span $199 to $699 per employee monthly. Add Taiwanese statutory contributions of roughly 14 to 20 percent of gross pay depending on the salary, any refundable deposit, and a currency markup, since the fee is billed in dollars against a New Taiwan dollar payroll.

What does an employer pay in Taiwan on top of salary?

Labor insurance and employment insurance at 8.75 percent of an insured salary that stops at NT$45,800, occupational accident insurance at an industry rate on a base that stops at NT$72,800, health insurance at 4.84 percent of the insured amount, a pension contribution of at least 6 percent, and an arrear wage payment fund levy of 0.025 percent.

Is the labor pension contribution mandatory in Taiwan?

Yes. The Labor Pension Act requires at least 6 percent of the monthly contribution wage from the employer, paid into an individual account at the Bureau of Labor Insurance that moves with the worker between jobs. Employees may add up to 6 percent of their own wages voluntarily, and the contribution wage table stops at NT$150,000 a month.

How does severance pay work in Taiwan?

It is half a month of average wages for each full year of service, pro rata for a partial year, with a hard ceiling of six months of average wages and payment due within 30 days of the contract ending. Average wages cover the final six months, so late raises and heavy overtime periods raise the final settlement.

What is the minimum wage in Taiwan?

NT$29,500 a month, or NT$196 an hour, from January 2026, applied nationally with no regional or small-employer variation. It rarely binds on professional salaries, but the bottom of every contribution table is pegged to it, so an increase raises the employer cost of low-paid roles across the country on the same day.

How much notice do I have to give an employee in Taiwan?

Ten days after three months of service, 20 days after a year, and 30 days after three years, plus up to two paid days a week for job hunting during the notice period. Because there is no at-will employment, the harder question is whether your grounds appear in Article 11 of the Labor Standards Act at all.

Should I use an employer of record or set up a Taiwanese company?

A provider first, and a company once the fee per head costs more than running one. A Taiwanese subsidiary needs a company registration, a responsible person, tax registration, a local accountant, and ongoing administration, against a fee that scales with every head you add. Run the crossover at three or four employees.