What is Taiwan's estate tax exemption in 2026, and do overseas assets count?

The number printed in the statute is not the number you pay

This is the single reason so many published tables are wrong, and it is worth understanding once. The Estate and Gift Tax Act carries base figures that have not moved in years: article 18 sets the exemption at NT$12m, article 17 sets the spouse deduction at NT$400,000, each lineal descendant at NT$40,000, each parent at NT$1m, the severe-disability deduction at NT$5m and funeral expenses at NT$1m, and article 13 sets the brackets at 10% up to NT$50m, 15% to NT$100m and 20% above. Read the statute alone and every one of those numbers is the wrong number to put on a return.

Article 12-1 is the reconciler. It provides that the exemption, the bracket amounts, the amounts excluded from the gross estate for the deceased's everyday implements and occupational tools, and the deductions for spouse, lineal descendants, parents, siblings, grandparents, funeral expenses and disability are each adjusted upward whenever the consumer price index has risen by 10% or more cumulatively since that item was last adjusted — rounded to the nearest NT$10,000. The index used is the twelve-month average published by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics running from November of the previous year to the end of October. The second paragraph then imposes a duty: the Ministry of Finance must calculate and announce, before the end of each December, the figures applicable to succession and gift cases arising in the following year.

Because each item carries its own baseline, the items drift apart. The Ministry's own 2026 announcement sets this out: the exemption was last adjusted for 2022, the excluded amounts and the deductions were last adjusted for 2024, and the bracket amounts were last adjusted for 2025 — and in each case the 2026 index had not risen 10% above that item's own baseline, so none of them changed. That is why the exemption has read NT$13.33m since 2022 while the deductions and the brackets moved underneath it in different years. A table that is right about the exemption can be two years stale on the brackets, and usually is.

The 2026 figures, and the deductions families discover too late

For any death occurring on or after 1 January 2026: exemption NT$13.33m. Deductions — spouse NT$5.53m; each lineal descendant NT$560,000, with a further NT$560,000 for each year a minor heir is short of majority; each parent NT$1.38m; a further NT$6.93m for any of those persons who is certified severely disabled under the People with Disabilities Rights Protection Act or a patient under the Mental Health Act; NT$560,000 for each sibling or grandparent the deceased supported, again with the minority uplift; and funeral expenses NT$1.38m. Excluded from the gross estate: the deceased's everyday implements and utensils up to NT$1m, and his occupational tools up to NT$560,000. Brackets: 10% on net estate up to NT$56.21m, 15% on the part between NT$56.21m and NT$112.42m, 20% above NT$112.42m. Net estate means the gross estate less those deductions and the exemption.

Three provisions cut against the family and are routinely missed. Article 17, second paragraph: where the deceased was a national not habitually resident in Taiwan, or was not a national at all, the deductions for spouse, descendants, parents, disability, supported siblings and grandparents, farmland and previously taxed property do not apply at all — only the tax and penalty, unpaid debt, funeral and administration deductions survive, and those only to the extent they arose in Taiwan. The same paragraph removes the spouse-to-grandparent deductions from any heir who renounces. Article 15 pulls back into the gross estate anything given away within two years of death to the spouse, to an heir in the article 1138 and 1140 order of the Civil Code, or to such an heir's spouse — the deathbed transfer is counted, not avoided.

One provision cuts the other way and is worth knowing. Article 17-1 allows the taxpayer to deduct the amount of a surviving spouse's claim to the distribution of the remainder of marital property under Civil Code article 1030-1. It is real money and it is often the largest single deduction in an ordinary estate. It also has a trap: if the claimed amount is not actually paid over to the spouse within one year of the date the tax clearance or exemption certificate is issued, the tax authority may recover the tax on the unpaid part at any time within the following five years. Claiming it on the return and then leaving the money undivided inside the family is how a settled estate reopens.

Whether the Singapore account counts turns on two words: habitually resident

Article 1 of the Estate and Gift Tax Act draws the whole line. Where a national of the Republic of China who is habitually resident in Taiwan dies leaving property, estate tax is levied on the entirety of his estate both inside and outside Taiwan. Where the deceased was a national not habitually resident in Taiwan, or was not a national, tax is levied only on the property he left inside Taiwan. There is no third category and no election. For the great majority of Taiwanese founders, the answer to the question every family asks — does the money in Singapore count — is simply yes, and it was yes from the day it was sent.

Article 4 defines the term, and it is broader than families expect. A person is habitually resident in Taiwan if either he had a domicile in Taiwan within the two years before death, or he had no domicile but a residence in Taiwan and, within those two years, was present in Taiwan for more than 365 days in aggregate. Keeping a household registration and a home in Taipei satisfies the first limb without anyone counting days. Moving the assets does not move the person, and the test looks at the person.

Article 9 then decides where each asset is situated — which matters for the second category of decedent, and for the credit. Shares and capital contributions are situated at the location of the head office of the issuing institution or the invested enterprise; bank deposits and things held on deposit are situated at the office or place of business of the financial institution; a debt is situated where the debtor habitually resides or has his office; movable and immovable property at their location, but ships, vehicles and aircraft at their place of registration; patents, trademarks and copyrights at the registering authority. So a holding company incorporated in Panama and shares in a Hong Kong company are, for situs, overseas — and for a habitually-resident Taiwanese decedent they are still fully taxable under article 1. Situs decides which estate the asset falls into; it does not decide whether Taiwan can reach it.

Article 11 gives the only relief, and it is narrower than it sounds. Estate or gift tax already paid on foreign property under the law of the country where it is situated may be credited against the Taiwan tax, but the taxpayer must produce the tax receipt issued by that country's tax authority, authenticated by a Republic of China embassy or consulate there — or, where there is none, by a local certified public accountant or notary. The credit is capped at the additional Taiwan tax caused by adding the foreign estate to the computation. It is a credit for tax actually paid abroad, not a discount for holding assets abroad.

What a Singapore structure changes, and what it plainly does not

Start with the disappointment, because it is the part the vendors leave out. Singapore charges no estate duty on deaths on or after 15 February 2008, and has no inheritance, gift or net-wealth tax. For a Taiwanese father who is habitually resident in Taiwan, that fact does not reduce his Taiwan estate tax by a single dollar. Worse, it removes the only relief article 11 offers: there is no foreign tax paid, so there is nothing to credit. Assets in Singapore are taxed in Taiwan at the full 10, 15 and 20 per cent, exactly as if they had never left. Anyone who tells a Taiwanese family that moving money to Singapore lowers the Taiwanese estate tax bill is describing a structure that does not exist.

What Singapore changes is the liquidity and the timetable, and for a large estate that is the difference between a plan and a fire sale. The clocks are short. Article 23 requires the estate tax return within six months of the date of death, filed with the authority for the district of household registration. Article 30 then requires payment within two months of service of the assessment notice, with one two-month extension available on application; where the tax is NT$300,000 or more and the taxpayer genuinely cannot pay in cash, he may apply within the payment period for up to eighteen instalments at intervals of no more than two months, carrying interest at the one-year post office time-deposit rate. And here is the sentence that decides cases: payment in kind under article 30 is limited to the taxed property situated inside Taiwan, or to other readily realisable property of the taxpayer. An estate that is mostly offshore holding-company shares cannot pay a Taiwanese tax bill with them. The tax on the overseas assets falls due in Taiwan, in cash, on a Taiwanese clock — while the overseas assets themselves sit behind a foreign probate or a foreign registrar.

A trust settled during the founder's lifetime attacks that mismatch directly, and only if it is done while he is alive and well. An asset settled into a Singapore trust before death is not in the estate at death: it is not waiting for a grant, it is not frozen while heirs argue, and the trustee can distribute or lend under the deed on the day the tax falls due. Singapore supports the architecture — a trust term of up to 100 years, no public trust register, and section 90 of the Trustees Act 1967 shielding a Singapore-law trust with Singapore-resident trustees from foreign forced-heirship claims where the settlor was neither a Singapore citizen nor domiciled in Singapore when the trust was created, a condition a Taiwanese founder ordinarily meets.

Now the honest limits, because a page that omits them is how families buy litigation. Section 90 binds a Singapore court; it does not bind a Taiwanese one, and a reserved-portion claim under Civil Code article 1223 brought in Taipei over Taiwan-situs assets is decided in Taipei. A settlement made when the founder's capacity is already arguable will be attacked on that ground and will usually fail. A transfer inside the two-year window before death is pulled back by article 15 regardless of where the trustee sits. And a trust settled by a still-living founder is a gift: it engages Taiwan's gift tax, with its own NT$2.44m annual exemption for 2026 and the same 10, 15 and 20 per cent brackets at NT$28.11m and NT$56.21m. Singapore takes a category of assets out of the queue and puts cash where the deadline is. It does not take the family out of Taiwan, and it does not take the estate out of the Taiwanese tax net.