National Development Council

1. 78% of employers in Taiwan face a talent shortage: According to the report of Manpower Group’s 2017/2018 Talent Shortage Survey, the job vacancies that are hardest to recruit for in Taiwan are those for sales representatives, followed in descending order by engineers and IT technicians.
    
2. The situation of domestic industries’ talent shortage calls for urgent response: According to statistics from the Executive Yuan’s Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS), there were roughly 218,000 manpower vacancies in the industrial and service sectors in 2017. Most serious was the shortage of 120,000 mid-level technicians (technicians & associate professionals, craft & related trades workers, and plant & machine operators), at 55% of the total, while there was also a shortage of 32,000 professional personnel.
    
3. Difficulty recruiting industrial innovation talent: According to the NDC’s Consolidated Report on the Survey and Projection of Talent Supply and Demand in Key Industries for 2018-2020, talent demand for technical and knowledge services mostly requires possession of a college degree or above plus two to five years’ work experience, while difficulty in recruiting such personnel was reported by 50% of firms in the communication & IoT installation and equipment industry, and 40% of firms in the cloud services industry.

1. Talent retention: Relative insufficiency of development opportunities within Taiwan, stagnation of wage growth, and countries competing to poach talent.
    
2. Talent recruitment: Wages are not internationally competitive, countries are competing with each other to recruit talent, complexity of laws and regulations makes residency difficult, and the living environment needs improving.
    
3. Talent cultivation: There is a gap between learning and application, and inadequate cultivation of future industry talent in digital and smart applications.

1)Amending the Income Tax Act to reduce the highest rate of individual income tax from 45% to 40%, and to provide for the profits of sole proprietorships and partnerships to be directly taxed as personal income, without the need to calculate and pay profit-seeking enterprise income tax. (§5; §§14, 71, 75, 79, 108 and 110)

1. Adjusting the mechanism of the NT$1 billion Angel Investor Program, to provide ample early-stage startup funding.
2. Revising and expanding conditions for the listing and OTC trading of large without-profit corporations, to help startups that are not yet earning a profit to access the capital markets.
3. Promoting the establishment of Linkou Startup Terrace, Taiwan Tech Arena, and Taiwan Startup Hubs in the northern, central and southern regions, to expand the development of international and local innovation clusters.

1. Relaxing work, visa and residency regulations: Issuing the 4-in-1 Employment Gold Card (incorporating work permit, resident visa, alien resident certificate, and re-entry permit).
2. Relaxing regulations on stay and residency of parents, spouses and children.
3. Providing retirement, health insurance and tax benefits (foreign special professionals having the portion of their salary above NT$3 million taxed as half of its actual amount for their first three years of working in Taiwan).

1. Relaxing the job qualification requirements and conditions for the employment of foreign professionals, to give a boost to their recruitment.
2. Making it easier for overseas compatriots to enter Taiwan and to come to work, reside and settle in Taiwan, to strengthen links with overseas compatriots.