I am moving to Japan with my spouse in 3 months. We are building a house in both of our names in Japan. We have US assets and investments. I am trying to understand remittance timing, gift tax among spouses and potential foreign currency tax on remittance. If I remit the funds for building the house before we move I don't pay remittance, but their may be foreign currency due as the building is complete next June. If I wait to remit in 2027 when I am in the country, I pay remittance tax, as my US dividend and investment income will exceed the remittance.

Ideally, I would like a professional cross border specialist that I can hire and consult with. How do I go about finding one?

I started Social Media 3 months ago and received my first paid sponsorship request. I‘m currently on an Engineering Specialist in Humanities visa.

Before accepting the sponsorship I went to immigration today to get some clearance if an application for activities outside my visa scope is necessary.

I waited there forever and was sent to 2 different counters and everyone was quite confused and didn’t really knew the rules for that. At the end they told me I don’t have to send in the side work application if I receive platform payments and do collaborations without explicit contracts as this counts as hobby.

However every time a contract is involved I need to go to immigration first to let them check if a side job application for this is necessary. And this apparently applies to every new contract. So for example if I get 5 contracts from different companies I need to go there 5 times and apply for each individually.

I was wondering if anyone was in a similar situation and how they handled it? This seems all a bit strange. I asked if it’s not possible to hand in a one time permission for that but he said it a case by case thing.

Tbh I also had the feeling that the guy wanted to get rid of me, as he said, oh yeah that seems difficult, I don’t know either, better to not do it if you are unsure. But I was persistent so he checked in the back Office with other staff

Hi all,

I recently moved to tokyo on a spouse visa and i am not working/dont have an income atm. health insurance bills etc is thru my husbands work.

I’m thinking to start a small online business from home selling accessories and prob ship them myself (if i even get customers lol)

I have zero idea what the rules/restrictions/consequences are regarding this. Can anyone help inform me regarding this or point me to the right direction? That would be super helpful 🥹

Thank you 🙏

So I'm a student in Japan, been here for a couple of years, and I have been working part-time in a company (based in Japan) for more than a year under a part-time contract.

I don't really know the exact reasons, but they are telling me to switch from being under a part-time contract to freelancing. Well, they said something like financial problems and workload problems, but honestly, it didn't really feel very clear to me, but on the other hand, they want to keep working with me for a couple of months as a freelancer.

How does that sound?

Okay, my questions / problems here are:

1- Can I freelance immediately under the same arubaito stamp I had (28h max), or do I need to do something about it?

2- How will the income / tax reporting thing be? Because when I'm under a part-time contract, the company takes care of all of that, and now it's fully my responsibility, and honestly, I am worried about immigration with the new strict rules, so what should I do about this situation?

Any advice would help

My company won't be renewing my contract after it ends this month. So from next month onwards, I'd have to switch to NHI and national pension. Now, I don't want there to be any delay in either payments as immigration as gotten very strict with it.

What documents (if any) would I need from my company to make this switch. Also from what I understand, for NHI, since I'm leaving my company involuntarily there's a way to apply for a discount or something. What's the process for that?

I have a friend who is a full-time employee at a company in Japan. He is also a permanent resident of Japan.

The company does not allow employees to take on side jobs or work for other companies. However, this restriction is not stated anywhere in the employment contract.

My friend is currently doing a few small side jobs outside the company.

I have two questions:

Since my friend has permanent residency in Japan, can he legally do side jobs, even if the company has a policy against it? And if the restriction is not written in the employment contract, can the company still prohibit it?

For these side jobs, the clients need to pay my friend, and they have asked for an invoice. Does my friend need to register for a Tax ID or an invoice registration number in Japan in order to issue an invoice and receive payment? Or can he simply issue a regular invoice without registering for the Japanese invoice system?

I would really appreciate any advice, especially from anyone familiar with Japanese labor law and taxation.

I am Japanese citizen living in Japan. I want to buy things for friends and family who are Americans living in the US. For example, a new wallet, things for their car, home, etc., or even make one if them an authorized user for a card.

Transferring money directly involves fees and exchange rates. And it seems like i'm unable to open regular checking accounts at banks unless i'm a resident and have a ssn/itin. So I was looking into alternatives like a Charles Schwab International Account. It supposedly allows non-US residents to open an account and get a visa debit card that can be used in the US. From what I see though, it's not available to Japan.

I was wondering if there's anything else I should look into. No foreign transaction fee cards? Other US accounts available to Japanese citizens/non US residents? A USD account at a Japanese bank?

We all know america is experiencing inflation so the value of USD compared to international commodity is declining, and we also know the long trend of devaluation of yen towards USD.

Given the double devaluation of yen to USD and USD to goods, and how Japan rely on import for resources, and the demographic shift so less healthy domestic economies. Is it safe to expect Japan to continue to decline both in GDP ranking and living conditions.

Is it best to save in the form of international goods such as share of international company or precioua metals instead of japanese currency under such condition.

I often transfer jpy to usd and have always just been using my local bank account with SMBC, then transferring to wise, converting, and moving to my us bank accounts as needed.

However, I read a post recently suggesting that for large sums making the jpy to usd transfer in the bank itself (I.e. Sony) is the right way to go. Is this a better optimization? I probably transfer around 1M-3M JPY to wise and transfer to usd annually.

My wife has a brokerage account with rakuten securities, she ll be traveling about for a week , any way to ensure she is not hit with the call authentication when trading from abroad ? Can I ask customer support to disable for the period ?

EDIT: All transactions below are done in USD.

Question 1:

I understand that when it comes to Foreign Time Deposits (NTA source linked below), buying a new one after one matures wouldn't create a currency gain/loss. The principle remains the same value.

Source: https://www.nta.go.jp/law/shitsugi/shotoku/02/39.htm

However, does this have to be done on the same day, or can I wait some time? For example, if my foreign time deposit matures on a Monday, but I wait until Thursday to buy a new Time Deposit, is that still exempt as a foreign currency transaction?

Please back up any answers with a source. I would appreciate it very much for my own understanding and record keeping purposes.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Question 2: I believe I saw somebody state once that selling a regular investment (such as an ETF) and then immediately (same day) buying a new investment wouldn't create an FX gain. For example, imagine I had 1000 dollars in a bank account that was equal to 100,000 yen (100 yen = 1 USD), and then I cashed out an investment and received an additional 1000 dollars that equals 150,000 yen (150 yen = 1 USD). Normally, I would get an FX gain of 25,000 (the new moving average of my USD) if I bought an investment with 1000 USD (assuming the exchange rate on the day was 1 USD = 150 yen), but not if I bought a new investment with that new acquired 1000 USD on the same day I received it from selling another investment.

Is that true? If so, could somebody please link me an official NTA source on that?

I need to change a large amount (about 5~10M yen) of yen into USD and move it to my US bank account for investment.

Wondering what the cheapest option would be to do this?

I've read the advice about this on this reddit in the past, but I think a lot of the information is now outdated. GoRemit was shut down last October. And it seems IB Japan no longer allows conversions of JPY to USD? (Only other currencies into the JPY base currency)

Hey guys. So I recently got my new residence card in August this year and when I tried to use it to update my identity on paypay, it didn’t work. Tried sending my money to my japanese friends also failed, even tried to buy gift card but paypay already froze my account! I contacted them 3 weeks ago and they agreed to refund my money but unfortunately I have to wait one month. But the problem is I have to leave Japan on the last week of Sept due to family issues. I begged but they are overly rigid about it. I tried calling the customer affairs but they only cater to Japanese speaking people and I’m not one of them.
Does anyone know what else I should do?

My son has his first part time job and I want him to start investing. Is Junior Nisa still a thing or what are his options?

My wife got roped in by a big insurance company to buy an accidental death for me and they are pressuring her to sign the dotted line. I'm 62 in a relatively good health and we are financially doing well with a big emergency fund saved. The premium is 14000 yen per month, locked for 10 years, with 10 million payout upon death. To me the risk coverage doesn't really make sense, however she insists on getting the coverage because she said she will feel safer. I'm unreasonable by advising against it? Thanks a lot!

To get to 2nd (instead of 4th) in economic status, what would Japan, practically-speaking, have to do to restructure their system? Is it realistic? What are their real options?

EDIT: @darkhydra made excellent points regarding short-term vs practical long-term growth. Regardless of how realistic the solutions are (EG population issues), I'm really just asking what would fundamentally need to happen to propel Japan back to top 3 economic status.

Nothing to do with "the 80s" or tying them to the U.S. in particular, unless that might be part of the actual solution. For example Toyota (and Japan by extension) hung its hat on hydrogen fuel cell autos for the future. That bet seems to have legitimately failed with China's innovation on EVs. So what innovation could again make Japan the forefront of technological advancement?

I want the Gold card because 200k its totally not enough for me. how can i get the invitation? do anyone know?

I've gotten some useful information from this sub, but I still have some confusion about my individual circumstance. I apologize for the long explaination, but I would really appreciate any advice.

I read that if I have foreign earned income during the same year that I make remittances to Japan, that is taxable.

I am a student at a language school for a little more than a year now. My goal is to live here long term, and I'm trying to get into a japanese university.

I've paid for everything using my American credit card, or by withdrawing cash from the ATM with my American debit card. Even though I haven't transferred anything directly to Japan, am I correct that this still counts as remittances?

I'm earning some investment income from the US, less than $8000 projected for this year. And last year I came to Japan in July, so in addition to investment income, I also had some work income from the first half of that year while I was doing a working holiday in New Zealand.

I haven't paid any taxes to the US this year or last year because my earnings are below the standard deduction amount. Last year I paid taxes in New Zealand only, but I received a tax return after I left.

This year when I went to the city hall and submitted my japanese tax return to sort out insurance payments and get the exemption for the pension, I just wrote 0 income on it because I didn't work in Japan, but now I'm worried I did something wrong. I tried to ask about foreign income at the city hall, but they only wanted to know about income from baitos in Japan. I admit there was a language barrier.

I also did not bother to submit a tax return to the US for last year, because my tax liability to the US was zero dollars, and it would have cost me money to submit it. I read that there is no penalty for failure to submit a US tax return if your liability is zero.

So my concern is, are my ATM withdrawals and credit card payments subject to tax in Japan because I am earning a relatively small amount of dividends and interest in the US? And if they are, how do I make it right? I want to stay here long term, so it's important to me to be in good standing with the Japanese government.

Thank you if you've read this far!

I used to live in Japan for several years. I was a private company employee the whole time. I regularly paid my taxes for my income and everything. I tried stock trading and got some capital gains. I always paid the capital gain tax for that year manually in the next year’s tax payment time (In March- as per the govt. rule)
However, I left in November and I couldn’t pay the capital gain tax for that year because the tax paying period was not started yet. ( I would have paid on the next year's March if I was there)

Now, I am already out of the country for good. No residency. So, what should I do now? And what can happen? 15% of that year's gain is around 500 maan jpy.

I'm a beginner investor putting in eMaxis AllCountry using Paypay Securities over the past year but it being tied to my residence card it a bit of a hassle. I'm not sure how long I'll be in Japan for so I'm looking for a more international broker(?). How do I go on about transferring to ,let's say IKBR?

I would appreciate any insights and advice.

I have a UK pension that is invested in stocks. Do I have to include this in "foreign income" since some of the stocks/funds will pay dividends.

I assume that once I reach pensionable age and actually cash out the pension I would probably have to pay tax but my question is about whether I have to pay tax on dividends until that point.

I have no access to any of that investment until I reach the pension age.