What a day - thank you HSBC.

Over the past couple of weeks I have been quite frustrated at the amount of time and red tape “BS” it takes to get some things done. For example, last week I went to the Household Registration office to update our records to advise them that we had moved residence from Zao Chiao to Taipei. I took all forms of ID including passport, ARC card, my wife’s ID card and Drivers License plus a copy of the lease document for where we are living. Not good enough. They wanted to sight some other document that I think may have been something like a property tax notice or similar. So we had to call the landlord and get him down to the office too with that document. He was able to leave after about 20 minutes. In total I was there for around 2.5 hours to get the address on an ID card updated.

The next day I went to China Trust Bank to organise an online banking facility as I am getting very tired of paying for everything in cash. It took almost 2 hours to get the paperwork filled out and satisfy the bank. At China Trust Bank no one speaks English but that is not the reason for things taking so long, I had Claire with me and she is fluent in Chinese and English.

After a few days the bank sent a guy to our office with a secure card reader and 3 smart cards. He provided some training and I got the online banking from China Trust working but it is only available in Chinese.

In my experience government departments and banks here are incredibly anal on paperwork and compliance. It appears that no one wants to make a decision in case it is wrong and they look bad or it affects their career path. So they go and talk with someone else and someone else again.

This compliance mentality is also very prevalent in the area of business expenses. It is not enough to just have the receipt for a business expense. At the time of purchase you have to advise them of your unique business ID and get it printed on the receipt or you cannot claim the expense. If I incur an expense in my name on behalf of the business with rare exception I cannot claim that as a business expense because the business number is not on it.

If I pay for some service overseas such as getting someone to design a product label for me or write some software, or any other such item that is not physically shipped through Taiwan customs, if I want to claim that as a company expense I have to pay 20% tax on the amount first.

Today was quite a day. I learned something. I received an email from my accountant who is processing the mountain of expense receipts and bank statements that I gave them recently. The email said that I owe the tax department some money, associated with my office lease. About NT$3,000 (AU$ 107/US$94) per month that we have leased the office. I spoke with Claire to try and understand what was going on.

We have a lease document (all in Chinese), and the lease document says that the monthly rental is NT$26,000, plus some expenses such as security, electricity, etc. (NT$26,000 is about AU$897, or US$815, it is not a lot of money but it is a small office in a very good neighbourhood.)

Anyway after drilling down and drilling down I find out that there is a clause in the lease that says if you want to claim this office lease expenditure as a business expense then you are required to pay the associated tax. What this really means is that the landlord is not going to declare to the tax office the income that I pay them for leasing the office. If I claim that expenditure as a business expense, which effectively alerts the tax office to the income the landlord received, then I have to pay the tax that the landlord would have had to pay the tax office if he declared the income. I cannot believe that they can be so blatant about tax avoidance.

There have been many times where I have bought a small item and then when I ask for a receipt with my business number on it they charge me a higher price.

As I understand it now – there are two prices available in a surprisingly large number of businesses the legal price and the illegal price. I cannot believe given how anal government departments and banks are, how open and widespread this practice of non-declaration of income and tax avoidance is.

On a more positive note given the amount of pain and frustration when going to the bank, I decided to look for another bank, hopefully one where some English was spoken. I had looked at the HSBC bank website and found that they had a branch near my office. The website was a promising start as it is available in both Chinese and English. So I decided to go there and find out more.

It was the best banking experience I have ever had anywhere. It was more like entering a 5 star hotel. The service was excellent from start to finish. The security guard opened the door and welcomed me in English. Then a lady in a smart uniform came up to me and asked in English how they could help me today. I said I was interested in opening an account. She took me to a well appointed lounge area and asked me to take a seat why she located someone to help me. She asked if I would like a tea, coffee or cool drink. Normally I would not have a coffee because you can get some horrible stuff served up, but my first impression was very good and I decided to see how far the excellence went.
Before the coffee arrived a guy arrived introduced himself and took us into a private office. He asked a few questions to determine my banking needs and then said that he was in the personal banking area and that he would get someone from commercial banking to assist me.

While he was gone the coffee arrived and it was good. I was thinking I might have to find reasons to visit the bank when I was in the mood for a good coffee.

Another gentleman entered the office and introduced himself. He was the assistant VP of Commercial Banking. He sat down and explained the bank’s services, and some of the features and benefits of their services. No question of mine was left unanswered and there were no areas where I was left wondering if I really understood correctly what they were saying.

I said I wanted to open an account straight away. The paperwork took almost no time to complete and all forms bar one were in English. He required one document that I did not have with me. He offered to ring my accountant and get it directly.

Late this afternoon I received an email from him. He updated me on the timing of my account progress and supplied me the contact details of my account manager and told me that this guy is the best guy they have.

What a world of difference between China Trust Bank and HSBC. As I already stated, the service that I received today from HSBC Bank at Neihu was the best I have experienced anywhere and I will highly recommend them to any foreigner working in Taipei.

Living in the shoebox, a trip to hospital, and the new arrival

Well we have been in the new apartment for 3 weeks now. What looked like a sizeable enough space when completely empty, soon filled up.

The apartment is much smaller than what we are used to in Australia and there have been some teething problems. For the first week there were boxes everywhere, no furniture other than our beds, and one chair, and we were all a little touchy operating in this crowded environment.

We still have lots of things in boxes. One of the bedrooms is full of boxes and is basically a no-go zone… unless you really want something very badly and have some idea exactly which box it might be in. Even though we only brought about one third of our belongings from Australia, we still brought too much. If I had to do it again I would bring much less. I believe most of us in the west have too much stuff. Much of it clogs our life and becomes a hindrance to us.

I had a 20 foot container to bring our stuff from Australia, We pretty much filled it end to end, but only to about waist high for part of it and very low at the other end. I brought 2 pushbikes – a road bike and a mountain bike. They can be rather awkward to store in a 3 bedroom apartment. One bike might have been a better idea.

I noticed when we were first looking at the apartment that we were about 400 metres from the local telephone exchange building. This has meant that I have scored great internet throughput. I am getting 22.5Mb download and 2Mb upload. Internet access is important as I am now using Skype a lot to talk with business contacts as well as friends and family around the world. Also I have had a couple of small bouts of homesickness and I have been listening to Australian radio over the internet. I have also started experimenting with internet TV – I found a couple of good channels – but there is a ton of rubbish there too.

We now have a new lounge suite, refrigerator, washing machine, microwave and various other items to make life more comfortable. We are still waiting on the kitchen table which should be here next week. Furniture is very well priced compared with Australia, but they also have crazy over the top priced furniture as well if that is your cup of tea.

When we moved in we had no gas – so the first few days was all cold showers. Not a huge issue given the heat and humidity. There is a gas bottle on the balcony which we have to get someone to replace with a full one each time it runs out. I don’t know how long it will last but they can typically replace within 24 hours so it’s not a major problem. Our stove has 2 strong gas burners – these are great for cooking.

The government website for the Taipei Water Department says you can drink the water out of the tap – but all the locals say no way. We were boiling all the tap water before drinking it but this is rather tedious, and it also has a terrible taste to it. When I used it for coffee it made it taste like burnt plastic. For a couple of weeks I was buying 6 litre bottles of drinking water from the local supermarket. These were quite well priced at NT$45 (AU$1.55/US$1.40), but a little inconvenient carrying them on the motor scooter. (I am getting better at loading the scooter up. I can get quite a bit of shopping on it now.)

Rather than carry on with this kind of water trouble we lashed out and bought a high quality water filter that can do all kinds of fancy things. It normally sells for around NT$40,000, but Edwina haggled and got it down to NT$33,000 (AU$1160/US$1030). It gets installed by a plumber and allows you to have filtered drinkable water straight at the tap. The water flows through a series of filters and It removes all “bugs” and bad tastes. You can even program the PH of the water that you get out. Not sure how it does that but you can get high Ph water (alkaline) for drinking which my wife tells me is good for you and for washing fruit and vegies. You can also get low Ph water (acidic) which apparently is good for cleaning your feet if you have athletes foot. I have been sticking with good old Ph 7, and the water tastes fine now.

In amongst all the mayhem of moving in, unpacking, finding and ordering furniture we had the unexpected arrival of our new baby daughter who arrived 3 weeks early. My wife was booked into a hospital located close to her mum’s place which is about 1.5 hours drive from our apartment. When she went into labour at 4AM, I wasn’t prepared to risk having the baby on the side of the road if we didn’t get to that hospital in time. So I played it safe and we went to the military hospital that has a civilian section and is about 500 metres from our apartment. At around 4.45AM my wife got on my scooter with me and I drove her the short distance to the hospital. Five hours later our beautiful daughter arrived… Angelique. (pronounced On-gel-leak. But she is called Angel for short.) Her Chinese name is Bai-Wei (pronounced “buy-way”) which means white flower or Jasmine flower.

When I first arrived at the hospital with Edwina she was taken in to a labour waiting room. She was put on a bed and after and initial examination left to progress further with her labour. I was quite concerned with the cleanliness of that room – there was blood on the stirrups and on the toilet seat from the last patient. I insisted that they get someone to clean it up. Given my new business is about hygiene, I have a heightened awareness of bacteria, viruses, super bugs and all the microbial dangers that lurk in hospitals. So when Edwina was moved to her recovery ward after the birth I went into that room and sprayed it with our germ killing products.

That was really my only concern. No one at the hospital spoke English apart from the doctors, but all the nurses were very helpful the whole time. During the birth I was allowed into the delivery room and it was all over very quickly in the end. They made me wear a medical gown, hat and sleeves over my shoes. These items were made for midgets – not a big Aussie like me. The gown was more like a straight jacket and the sleeves only covered half of my shoes.

There were a few minor issues as she was quite small at birth and weighing in at just 2.2 Kgs so Angel was placed in a humicrib in the intensive care ward. She was incredibly small but always appeared to be strong and I never felt any real concern for her. Angel and Edwina were able to come home just 3 days after the birth. Since arriving back home Edwina has been keeping the milk up to her and Angel is growing rapidly. Both are well.