Taiwan's legislature passed changes to its industrial innovation law that make it cheaper for workers to hold company shares and easier for investors to back young startups — good news for tech talent, founders, and venture funds.

• The cap on employee stock awards that can skip immediate income tax doubled to NT$10 million a year.
• Workers who stay at the company for two years can be taxed on the lower value from when they got the shares, not the higher sale price.
• Company directors and supervisors are shut out of the tax break.
• A startup now counts as a startup for eight years instead of five, and venture funds face far lower investment quotas to qualify for pass-through tax treatment.
• Individuals putting cash into high-risk startups can deduct half the investment from their income, up to NT$5 million a year.

Outlook: Taiwan is trying to stop its engineers and chip talent from being poached abroad, and the economics ministry has been told to build a tracking database to check whether the tax breaks actually work.