Taiwan's Ministry of Finance publishes a list of foreign e-service providers: foreign companies that sell online services into Taiwan. Each company on the list has a rate that the National Taxation Bureau (NTB), Taiwan's tax authority, has worked out for it. When a Taiwanese company pays one of them, it uses that rate to work out the tax, within the approved period and scope. OpenAI is on the list dated September 30, 2026, and Anthropic is not. A company subscribing to ChatGPT withholds 2.1%, and one subscribing to Claude withholds 20%.
Whether a provider is on the list changes what it costs a Taiwanese company to subscribe to an AI service.
A company that subscribes to a foreign AI service such as ChatGPT or Claude pays the subscription fee, and on top of it, a separate tax to the NTB.
Take 10 people on the Team plan. A Team standard seat billed monthly is NT$790 per person per month, a price that includes 5% business tax (Taiwan's VAT). When the company enters its tax ID number (統編) at checkout, Anthropic does not charge business tax, so each seat is about NT$752. That is roughly US$25. US$ figures in this article are approximate, at about NT$30 to US$1. Ten seats come to about NT$7,520. From here on, the article rounds that to NT$7,500 (about US$250) a month.
For the same NT$7,500 subscription, a company pays about NT$7,661 a month in total for ChatGPT once tax is added, and NT$9,375 (about US$313) for Claude. The gap is about NT$1,714 (about US$57). With the subscription fee held equal, all of that gap is tax. NT$9,375 is not NT$7,500 plus 20%. The calculation comes in the next section.
What tax a company withholds when it subscribes to Claude
A company that subscribes to Claude runs into three taxes:
A 5% tax on the transaction: the Tax line on the receipt.
End of this section, and the note at the endA tax on Anthropic's profit, paid on top of the subscription fee.
This section and the nextA tax on the company's own profit. Booking the cost as an expense lowers it.
"Four scenarios" in the next sectionThe NT$1,875 (about US$63) in the opening is the second one: Anthropic's income tax.
It is Anthropic's income tax, paid by the company that pays the bill
Anyone who earns money in Taiwan owes income tax. Every May, employees file individual income tax returns and companies file profit-seeking enterprise income tax returns, called income tax for short in this article.
Foreign e-service providers such as Anthropic and OpenAI that sell services into Taiwan also owe income tax on that profit, under the Income Tax Act (links to Taiwanese laws and rulings in this article go to the official Chinese text). They have no branch or office in Taiwan, so under the Ministry of Finance's rules, how the tax is paid depends on the buyer. For sales to individuals, the provider files and pays with the NTB itself the following May, and the buyer does nothing. For sales to companies, government agencies and similar organizations, the paying party pays it on the provider's behalf. When the Taiwanese company pays, it deducts the tax from the amount due and remits it to the NTB.
This is called withholding, and in law the paying company is the withholding agent. The amount, set by regulation, is 20% of the full payment.
The invoice excludes tax, so the tax is paid on top of the subscription
Taiwan's withholding rules assume the invoiced amount includes the tax. If Anthropic issued a NT$7,500 invoice, the paying company would deduct NT$1,500 and remit it to the NTB, then pay the remaining NT$6,000 to Anthropic. Under that design, the paying company pays nothing extra.
International service contracts can be written another way. The invoice excludes tax, the contract says taxes are the customer's responsibility, and the customer adds the withheld amount on top (a gross-up), so the provider receives the full invoiced amount. The contract covering Anthropic's Team, Enterprise and API plans is written this way, as are those of OpenAI, AWS and Zoom. When the company pays by card, the card is charged the invoiced NT$7,500, and there is no way to deduct the tax first. So the paying company adds this income tax on top of the NT$7,500, and files and pays it itself.
How much is added? The regulation's 20% is calculated on the tax-inclusive amount: 20% of it is tax, and the remaining 80% is the NT$7,500 that goes to Anthropic. So the tax-inclusive amount is 7,500 ÷ 0.8 = NT$9,375, and the tax is NT$1,875. The NT$9,375 is the amount the company reports to the NTB when it files the withholding.
Measured against the tax-exclusive NT$7,500, the tax is 25%.
If the tax is not withheld, the paying company is liable
The tax is Anthropic's, but under the Income Tax Act withholding is the paying company's obligation. Within 10 days of each payment, it pays the tax to the NTB and files a withholding return.
If the NTB finds that a company did not withhold, the company pays the tax plus a fine of up to the amount of the tax. If it misses the deadline the NTB sets for paying, the fine can reach three times the tax. The NTB can go back 7 years.
A company that has not been withholding can pay voluntarily, before anyone reports it and before the NTB opens an investigation. Under a Ministry of Finance ruling, the fine can be waived, but interest is added. For what else is owed and how to pay it, ask the company's accountant or the NTB for the company's location.
The Income Tax Act lists who has this obligation. It depends on who pays, and the plan makes no difference. Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise and API all count: whenever a company, government agency, school, professional firm or similar organization pays Anthropic, it withholds. An individual paying in their own name with their own money does not withhold.
With a tax ID number, the NT$0 on the receipt is a different tax
When a company enters its tax ID number while subscribing to Claude, the tax at checkout becomes NT$0. It looks as if the tax has been taken care of.
That NT$0 is business tax. Without a tax ID number, Anthropic treats the buyer as an individual, adds 5% to the subscription fee, and passes it on to the NTB. On a NT$7,500 subscription, that line is NT$375. With a tax ID number, the buyer is not an individual, and under the Value-added and Non-value-added Business Tax Act (the Business Tax Act) Anthropic does not collect it, so the line shows NT$0. The receipt carries an extra note: Tax to be paid on reverse charge basis. The buyer handles this 5% itself. Most companies owe nothing, and some organizations pay it themselves. The details are in the note at the end.
Is it worth applying for approval?
2.1% or 20%: the difference is approval
Back to the list from the opening. OpenAI and Anthropic both sell AI services. The rates their paying customers withhold differ almost tenfold. OpenAI has an approval, the NTB's decision on the two ratios explained below. Anthropic is not on the list as of September 30, 2026.
Income tax is meant to fall on profit, but the 20% withholding described above applies to the whole payment. So the Ministry of Finance has a set of directions that let a foreign company ask the NTB to decide two things: how much of its revenue counts as profit, and how much of that profit counts as earned in Taiwan. After that, the 20% applies only to the resulting share. These two ratios are what the approval sets.
The income tax rate is fixed at 20%. Multiply the three, and the result is the rate withheld on each payment:
21% × 50% × 20% = 2.1%
For a foreign company without approval, the law applies 20% to the whole tax-inclusive amount, which treats every dollar it receives as profit.
Because OpenAI already has approval, a company subscribing to ChatGPT simply withholds at the rate on the list (2.1% when worked out), within the approved period and scope, without applying itself. On the list, the row for OpenAI OpCo (the entity Taiwanese companies contract with) gives the scope as Go, Plus, Pro, Business and API subscription or prepaid plans. Enterprise is not listed. A company paying for Enterprise withholds 20% unless it applies for its own approval.
Anthropic is not on the list, and the paying company can apply itself
The same directions give the paying company two routes. It can wait for Anthropic to get its own approval and appear on the Ministry of Finance's list, or it can apply for approval itself.
Confluence Partners took the second route and received approval in about 6 weeks. The NTB classified Claude under industry code 6312-99, Taiwan's category for other data processing, hosting and website hosting services, with a net profit ratio of 21% and a domestic profit contribution ratio of 50%. That works out to 2.1%, the same as OpenAI. The monthly withholding fell from NT$1,875 to about NT$161 (about US$5).
This route has one limit: only the company that applied can use the approval. Another company cannot withhold at 2.1% on the strength of Confluence Partners' approval. It has to file its own. The two ratios depend on Anthropic's business, not on which company applies.
Four scenarios: among the legal ones, approval costs the least
Of the two routes above, waiting for the list means withholding at 20% in the meantime, and filing means applying for approval. There are two other scenarios. One is not withholding: a company that does not know about this tax pays by card and books the subscription as an expense from the receipt. The other is subscribing in a personal name. The four compare as follows, for a NT$7,500 monthly subscription and a profitable company that files its income tax based on its books and records (查帳申報), in NT$:
Actual monthly cost in each scenario. The table below shows the calculation.
| Scenario | Subscription | Tax withheld | Business tax | Income tax saved | Actual cost | Legal? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Withhold at 20% | 7,500 | 1,875 | 0 | 1,875 | 7,500 | Legal |
| Apply for approval | 7,500 | about 161 | 0 | about 1,532 | about 6,129 | Legal |
| Illegal | ||||||
| Subscribe in a personal name | 7,500 | 0 | 375 | 0 | 7,875 | Legal |
Actual cost is the subscription plus the withheld tax and business tax, minus the income tax the company itself saves. In the first three, the company enters a tax ID number, and for an ordinary invoice-issuing company the business tax is 0 (other cases are in the note at the end). The NT$7,875 in the personal-name scenario is paid by the company's representative (負責人, the person legally responsible for the company) or an employee, out of their own money.
Booked as an expense, the cost lowers the company's own income tax. The subscription fee and the withheld tax are both company expenses. More expenses mean less profit, so the income tax the company itself pays each May goes down too, at the 20% rate set by the Income Tax Act. With approval, the company pays about NT$7,661 a month, saves about NT$1,532, and its actual cost is about NT$6,129 (about US$204). Withholding at 20%, it pays NT$9,375 a month, saves NT$1,875, and its actual cost is NT$7,500. The opening gap of about NT$1,714 becomes about NT$1,371 (about US$46) once the income tax saved is counted.
For a company that is loss-making, has taxable income of NT$200,000 or less a year, or files under the expanded written review method (擴大書審), the Income Tax Act gives a different saving. Ask the company's accountant.
Not withholding is illegal. The books show the expense with no matching withholding return. And compared with approval, it saves only about NT$129 a month.
Subscribing in a personal name does not pay off either. Some companies consider having the representative or an employee pay by card in their own name, without a tax ID number. That avoids withholding income tax, but the individual pays 5% business tax (NT$375 in the table), more than the 2.1% after approval (about NT$161 in the table). The money is also not paid by the company, so it is not a company expense, and the company loses the income tax saving.
Compared with withholding at 20%, the more seats, the bigger the gap:
| Seats | Monthly subscription | Monthly saving with approval | Annual saving |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | NT$7,500 | about NT$1,371 | about NT$16,500 |
| 20 | NT$15,000 | about NT$2,743 | about NT$32,900 |
| 50 | NT$37,500 | about NT$6,856 | about NT$82,300 |
One application covers a period of time. The figures above assume the approval applies for the whole year.
How to apply for approval
Four things to know before applying
Send four documents: fill in two, print one, paste into one
It is best to apply after the first payment has been withheld and filed at 20%. Each payment is withheld at 20% anyway. The withholding certificate (扣繳憑單) shows the tax-inclusive NT$9,375, the NT$1,875 withheld and the NT$7,500 paid to Anthropic, which is the most direct proof that the company bears this tax.
Four documents go in the envelope, stacked in numbered order. All four are in the document package: fill in or print the first three, and paste the company's own records into the fourth. The package also contains a file named "0 Read me first", which is for reading only and is not sent.
On the application form, leave the pre-filled industry code 6312-99 and net profit ratio of 21% as they are.
Anthropic's tax registration in document 3 uses another code, 5820-99 (printed as 582099), Taiwan's category for other software publishing, which carries a net profit ratio of 16%. Confluence Partners first applied under that code. After reviewing the application, the NTB changed it to 6312-99.
Under the directions, the application goes to the NTB for the company's location. Which NTB office covers each city or county, and which section handles the application, varies, so call before mailing to confirm the section and address.
The official blank application form and a filled-in example are on the Ministry of Finance's eTax portal, under related form downloads. The application form in the package was filled in from the version on that page marked for withholding agents (扣繳義務人申請專用). The Ministry of Finance also publishes a 29-page Q&A. Parts of it have not caught up with later amendments; where they differ, the directions prevail.
Note: on the business tax side, who pays it
As noted above, with a tax ID number the 5% business tax (NT$375 on NT$7,500) still exists, but Anthropic does not collect it. Under the Business Tax Act, the buyer handles it instead, which is what the receipt line "Tax to be paid on reverse charge basis" refers to. Most companies owe nothing, but some organizations pay it themselves. For a NT$7,500 monthly subscription:
| Who | For example | Pays? | Monthly amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ordinary invoice-issuing companies | Most companies and businesses | No (when used in their own business) | NT$0 |
| Organizations that do not issue invoices | Government agencies, associations, professional firms, hospitals, clinics, small shops exempt from issuing invoices | Yes (schools and research institutions buying it for teaching or research are exempt) | NT$375 |
| Companies with partly tax-exempt sales | Companies selling fresh produce, rice or textbooks | Partly | In proportion to tax-exempt sales; at 30%, NT$112.5 |
For an ordinary invoice-issuing company, business tax is the 5% it collects from customers minus the 5% it pays on purchases. Even if it paid the NT$375, it would subtract it back, so the Business Tax Act exempts the portion used in its own business. When an exempt company files its business tax return, it still enters the amount paid to Anthropic in field 74. Organizations that do not issue invoices have no such subtraction and pay separately.
Those who owe it pay within 15 days from the start of the filing period after the payment. For how periods are counted and which form to use, ask the company's accountant or the NTB for the company's location.
FAQ
When a company subscribes to Claude, what is the difference between income tax and business tax?
Business tax is a 5% tax on the transaction: the Tax line on the receipt. A company that enters its tax ID number usually owes none. The income tax here is a tax on Anthropic's profit, and it does not appear on the receipt. The paying company withholds 20% of the tax-inclusive amount, or 2.1% after approval.
Can a foreign company skip issuing a Taiwanese invoice? Why does a Claude subscription come with only an English receipt?
Yes. When a foreign e-service provider sells to individuals, the Regulations Governing the Use of Uniform Invoices require it to issue a cloud invoice (Taiwan's electronic invoice). When it sells to a company with a tax ID number, the Ministry of Finance says no cloud invoice is needed, and under the Business Tax Act the buyer handles the business tax instead. So a company that enters its tax ID number gets an English receipt. The receipt line "Tax to be paid on reverse charge basis" refers to this. The Taiwan tax registration number for Anthropic on the receipt is the registration it uses to pay business tax on sales to individuals. It does not mean Anthropic has a branch in Taiwan.
In practice, this English receipt is the supporting document for the company's books. When Confluence Partners applied for approval, this receipt is also what it attached for the National Taxation Bureau.
Why does the paying company withhold a foreign e-service provider's income tax?
Foreign e-service providers such as Anthropic and OpenAI have no branch or office in Taiwan. Under the Ministry of Finance's rules, for sales to companies, government agencies, schools and similar organizations, the paying party deducts the tax when it pays and remits it to the National Taxation Bureau on the provider's behalf. For sales to individuals, the provider files with the National Taxation Bureau itself, and the buyer does nothing.
If the company pays for an individual plan such as Pro or Max, does it still have to withhold?
Yes. Whenever a company pays, it withholds, whatever the plan, and it can apply for approval for any plan. Divide the tax-exclusive subscription fee by 0.8 to get the tax-inclusive amount; 20% of that is the tax. After approval, divide by 0.979; 2.1% of that is the tax.
If the company pays for the subscription but does not book it as an expense, can it skip withholding?
No. Withholding depends on who pays. The Income Tax Act says that when a company, government agency, school or similar organization pays a foreign e-service provider, it withholds at the time of payment, whether or not the payment is booked as an expense.
If an employee pays with a personal credit card and is reimbursed by the company, does the company still have to withhold?
Yes. The company uses the service and ultimately pays for it, so withholding is the company's job. According to the National Taxation Bureau's view, the time to withhold is when the employee claims reimbursement from the company, not the day of the card charge. The tax is paid and filed within 10 days of withholding. Check with the National Taxation Bureau for the company's location before acting.
How is withholding calculated if Claude Team is billed annually?
The same way as monthly billing, except the company withholds on the once-a-year payment and pays and files within 10 days. A Team standard seat billed annually is about NT$600 per person per month once the tax ID number is entered. For 10 people, one payment of about NT$72,000 (roughly US$2,400) means an extra NT$18,000 at 20% of the tax-inclusive amount. After approval, it is about NT$1,544.
