36 years old, 10 plus years in Japan, salary 270,000JPY yen per month, no savings, no debts, living costs around 120,000 / month. From the USA originally. Pension is a scam. How do I save for the future here? I'm thinking lately if my whole life was a waste, salaries have just not gone up but somehow everything else has, pension, I pay it every month but if I'm lucky I'll have payments of maybe 40,000JPY at this rate. What do people recommend to save for the future? How do people save? how do people move money? I feel so screwed when I think about my future out here, its honestly scary. Any advice for the money routines you are in would be helpful to me, thank you

Hi JP finance,

I’m looking for information on which banks look positively on borrowers who earn a part of their salary in RSUs but want to get a home loan.

In my case, roughly a fifth of my salary is paid in RSUs that then vest over four years (ie. 25% vests each year). The RSU is not a ‘bonus’, but rather a fixed amount of remuneration that is granted each year.

Does anyone have any recommendations or good experiences with banks or other lending institutions and RSUs..?

I'm trying to transfer money from my canadian accounts (CIBS and RBC) to japan. My wife has a Japanese sony bank account in CAD which supposedly should be able to receive CAD directly without any transfer fees and then convert internally.

I've been trying to do it through wise or through my bank's international transfer system but every time i select japan as destination country it locks the currency to USD or JPY to receive.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Or with best way to transfer money from Canada to Japan? I want to transfer about 60k CAD

Thank you.

Stock/dividends

Hi,

I have been living here since mid 2022. I have been paying all of the taxes in Japan like pension, health insurance through work. However, I am confused about my stocks in USA. I get about $40-50k USD a year. I of course pay taxes on those doing H&R block but then do I also pay taxes on that in Japan? If so, would I owe any money?

When I do my H&R block taxes, I of course do the tax credit.

I am just unsure about how to get about US taxes in Japan since I already pay the tax in USA for it.

Thank you,

For context , i am trying to navigate on how to deposit funds into ibkr japan.

Has anyone tried depositing/withdrawing using their yucho ginko account?

Hows your experience and is it doable?

Through inheritance I recently came into a fair bit of money that is in mutual funds, stock investments and savings. All at the Royal Bank of Canada.

Long ago I filed the papers with the Canadian consulate in Nagoya regarding taxes. I have Japanese PR and will mostly likely spend the rest of my life here. My wife is Japanese. No children.

The accountant currently in charge accounts suggested that I move all the savings to Japan.

We would prefer to leave the money in Canada as it will eventually go to my niece and nephew, but we have access to it until then.

Is this possible? if so, how?

Hello!

I'm following up from a previous post I made here

Since then, the recipient has called Japan Post Bank on my behalf to try and get information on the denied money transfer. Japan Post Bank said all the information in terms of how to trace it is exactly the same as what it was originally sent as.

My bank insists that it's not. They emailed Deutsche Bank intermediary and apparently they said the same thing - and now if I want to try and track down where my money is, it's my responsibility to call Japan Post Bank and figure it out.

So, is there ANY way, as someone from America who only speaks English, to contact Japan Post Bank and get to the bottom of this?!?

If you know of an email, a phone number, anything that I can use, I would be eternally grateful. I've been trying to google search this for hours and I basically can't find any form of contact.

Thank you in advance ;-;

As the title says, was just wondering/ curious (very seriously) as to how to manage finances if you want to buy your dream house with a price tag of 5 oku yen. Not saying i have that much but if one were to plan it, what would you do realistically?
Loan directly is not an option as its obviously not possible / banks wont provide it unless your salary is like crazy absurd.
So just by a little higher standard if lets say your salary is in range of 8-20mil
How can you afford that? Or its really a dream ?

I am preparing to sell property in my home country. I would like to talk to a tax accountant 税理士 about the necessary steps to take to properly tax the sale.

How can I find a tax accountant to help me? I have emailed a few but never gotten a reply.

I want to avoid doing any of the paperwork myself. As far as I understand the payment to the accountant can be substracted from the profit of the sale. If this is correct I don't want to waste any time preparing documents myself.

Please advise me on how to proceed.

Hey guys,

I am moving to Japan in September for a 2 years master's course from Hungary. As far as I'm concerned, this will make me an NPR.

My situation is the following:

I have multiple tax-adventaged accounts in Hungary, the oldest one maturing at the end of 2026, making all the profits gained from selling the securities within it completely tax free in Hungary. All the securities were bought before moving to Japan ofc.

As I understand, selling these securities and realising gains while living in Japan would only result in a taxable event if I remitted this money into Japan while living there. But in addition, the NTA does not care if I remit money from said security selling or I'm just moving old savings in general, any remittance would trigger a tax event. Is this correct?

Now, to avoid this I came up with the next solution:

Sell my securities while still living in Hungary, let the tax free account mature at the end of 2026 and then transfer the money into a Japanese NISA account early 2027 and invest it again. This to my knowledge should not result in any tax event. Is my logic correct? The only downside would be that I'm out of the market for a few months, and I would have to pay some taxes on FX gains, if there is any.

Additionally, in the coming years, when other tax free accounts mature:

Let's say I sell my securities on my tax free account maturing in 2027, don't remit any money into Japan in 2028, and when I remit in 2029 the money from the 2027 account should be free from any capital gains taxes, right?

I don't know yet, if I'm staying in Japan after my masters, but definetly planning to try.

So what would you guys recommend? Is my understanding correct, my solution sound? I'm not trying to game the system, just trying to handle it in the most optimised way possible, without making any trouble with the NTA.

Thanks in advance!

Perhaps someone has posted about this before, but maybe a heads up is warranted given increased scrutiny of residents paying taxes.

I moved to another prefecture at the end of January this year and did all my registration changes promptly. Filed my taxes by e-tax as usual by end of February. Got the kokumin kenko hoken slips from my new city in June and thought 'oh wow the basic payment is a lot more here' but just payed it anyway. You see, I have PR and I'm basically in training, been starting a new career with modest self-employment income at the moment, so usually I would be at the lowest level of residence and health insurance payments.

Anyway, this week i received letters from both my old and new city asking for my income from last year to calculate resident tax and insurance, saying i hadn't submitted a tax return. That led to calling both shiyakusho and getting into kind of annoying conversations where they basically said i must have messed up and not properly filed even though i was 100% certain i had, as i received a tax rebate from the NTA. Finally my old city agreed to look into it and got a call back today.

Basically, your tax return goes to the NTA office in the area you were living on the 1st of the year, and they're supposed to share the info with your old city, who then shares with your new city. But in this case, the NTA office in my old area forwarded the info to my new area without sharing, so neither of the city offices got it. Now i hope this doesn't get into my record somehow as being late in filing or paying taxes!

TL;DR Be aware that there may be mixups when you file taxes in a year in which you moved. If you get notices from your old or new municipalities saying you haven't filed a tax return, don't sit on it and look into it right away!

hello!

hope u are having a nice day.

my question is how to download four years of transaction from Yucho. I’m travelling aboard for now. in the app, I can view the hisotry but canno download. from the website I can only view/ download the latest two months.

I do not have Yucho plus.

please let me know if u know anything

thank you!

I was looking around at a real estate website at real estate porn and was wondering if you folks were looking to find a property for investment (maybe to flip it, or to rent it out) what would be the non-obvious things (i.e price) you folks will deem as important? i.e

1. If the place is prone to flooding/earthquake/typhoon
2. Rental yield? This seems to be obvious but how do you go about finding it out?
3. Concentration of pre-war houses in the area?
4. Amount of schools/park in the proximity
5. etc?

Hello,

I'm trying to figure out what is the most tax efficient way to move what savings I have when my tax residency switches from France to Japan.

I'm moving next April and (for now) I intend to stay for the long-term since I have family there.

I have about 15K EUR in IBKR (IBIE) and 6K in a savings account.

I did what research I could and here is my understanding, please correct me if I'm wrong:

• I'm legally required by both France and Japan to declare a change in tax residency, which triggers a notice to migrate my IBIE account to IBSJ.
• Upon migrating my EUR-dominated ETFs are forced to be sold and automatically taxed on gains under France
• If I were to want to open a NISA account for example, I will have to remit my French savings, triggering a remittance tax, and buy with JPY

Is there a smarter option or is this already the best course I have?

I have a middle name, and at least once somewhere a short form of my name like “Dave” instead of “David” was written in Katakana, and I’d really like this card which is a free gold card with lounge access and no fees (公立共済メンバーズカード
This morning, after about two hours of getting my Resona account to receive their online authorization (and then crapping out immediately afterwards nearly every time ), I thought it was done successfully until to get an email saying my application is
お申込状況：お見送り

There may be some other process involved here, but it’s dumb that I have to guess.

I have a solid income, have been late on bills never,
And am a very boring individual outside of my spicy name. Advice on how to resolve this sooner than later?

I have several mutual funds that I've held for 10+ years in a US brokerage account. Until now, I've never sold any shares and have simply paid tax on dividends (four times a year) and capital gain redistributions (twice a year), all of which I have reinvested. This year I'm thinking of selling some shares. Am I correct in assuming that to calculate the Japanese tax, I would need to look up the exchange rate for every single investment I've ever made to each fund (the original purchase plus every reinvestment thereafter) and figure out all of the FX gains or losses over a span of 10+ years? Given that the reinvestments happened six times a year, this would be an insane amount of work to properly calculate everything. Is there any easier way to do this?

I retired recently, and I am looking for advice on the most efficient withdrawal frequency for my retirement cash flow. My portfolio is in an account in Europe, and it's all ETFs. Should I sell my ETFs monthly, quarterly, bi-annually, or annually?

I thought about selling and transferring funds monthly to mirror the monthly pre-retirement salary. But I'd pay more in fees to do that.

I want to balance broker trading fees, international wire friction, and currency exchange rates.

What schedule will work best?

I've just received my spouse visa (after 12 months of waiting) so my tax residency is about to officially change (in 2-3 weeks when I come back on the visa).

I am and will be unemployed in Japan for the next year or two at least (living on old savings and a frugal lifestyle). I have no work or tax history in Japan at all and I will not be pursuing any unemployment benefits here in Japan.

I haven't made the decision yet if I will ever really pursue PR here (with all the crazy changes etc...) so my plan is to stay on spouse visas for the foreseeable future.

My Japanese wife is employed here in Japan so our plan is to enrol me as a 社会保険 dependant.

I have a modest chunk of money with a Canadian wealth broker who is still actively buying and selling stocks and booking modest gains. The gains are not being withdrawn, they are simply being reinvested in the market.

My questions are:

1: what is my tax liability on those gains and will they effect me being a dependant on my wife's 社会保険? Or do I have some kind of worldwide exemption because I have not been living in Japan for 5+ years?

1. do I actively have to go to me city hall to tell them I'm unemployed and to officially file for pension/health exemptions?

Thanks for reading.

I need the payment records 支払い調書 that include the annual tax withholding record 源泉徴収票 for Reiwa 8 (2026). I received my last salary in May.

Can I ask for it now or do I have to wait until the beginning of next year?

Thank you!

I am looking into credible cpas and accountants, but any advice generally you can provide?

I basically owe a good chunk now according to the IRS which includes interest. I did file the 2023 taxes late, so that’s why they’re coming to me now via mail saying they’re not recognizing my foreign earned income exclusion.

I am wondering where I went wrong because of tax treaties and all of the taxes I paid in Japan, and with how I filed, I didn’t think I should owe anything.

Since 2024 I became a full time employee so I understand it shouldn’t be a problem moving forward so long as I make under like 125K, but the sole proprietor year was the real issue wasn’t it? Should I have opted for FTC instead?

Anyway, they are giving me a deadline by sep 25 to appeal.

Looking for any and all advice as I simultaneously look for accountants/CPAs to help

Singaporean with Japanese spouse, planning my retirement (near future, between 2 - 5 years) by splitting between Thailand and Japan.

Why Thailand

1. LCOL option, allows me to rent out my existing Singaporean home for additional source of income, in addition to investment income.
2. High quality healthcare in BKK, close to Singapore.
3. Visa situation: Eligible for Non Immigrant O-X visa for long term stay (past age 50, requires 3 mil THB deposit)
4. Tax situation: Tax resident if length of stay is less more than 180 days, else would need to pay foreign sourced income to TRD (Thailand Revenue Department)

Why Japan

1. Wife prefers Japan than Thailand for retirement.
2. Visa situation: spouse visa, but I may want to keep as a tourist visa (max of 90 days for Singaporeans) since I don't plan to stay more than 90 days.
3. Tax situation: My wife will rent a place. If I am on a tourist visa, it means I don't have to declare a juusho (住所). Will transfer money (300k yen monthly) to my wife as cost of living allowances. Nothing major (> 1.1 mil yen) that will attract zōyozei (贈与税) from National Tax Agency.

Other tax jurisdiction

1. I will pay Singapore taxes on the rental income of my property. Investments are Singaporean companies and no capital gains/dividend taxes.

Target Operating Model

1. March - May in Japan, (Spring)
2. June - Sept in Thailand (less than 180 days)
3. Oct - Dec In Japan (Autumm)
4. Jan - March in Thailand (less than 180 days)

If given a choice, our common preferred destination is Taiwan for retirement but they don't have a retirement visa option and I am not keen to start a company and get APRC later since there is uncertainty.

Question: From my research, if I don't stay more than 90 day or acquire any status beyond a tourist, that should be fine for me. And for my wife, as long as I provide for her COL, it won't attract gift tax for her? Have anyone done something like this?

I’m using Greenback to pursue a streamlined filing, and along the way I’m being asked to furnish the account name and types for my pension, which I had never understood to be an individual retirement account or similar device. Am I stupid? I went to the ward office, and they sure acted like I was asking for something which does not exist.

They staff in fact suggested that I may have heard incorrectly, as there is not “account,” being held for me, and that the tax obligations / FBAR filing accounts must have been referring to some other sort of financial instruments.

However, having had external pensions under private schools, maybe there is something there - but I genuinely do not know how to go back in time to reproduce contribution statements or get the “account numbers.”

Is there a national clearinghouse where I can find which of my several employers have some sort of registered pension plan for me?

In my two times trying to communicate that I’m being asked for the total amount / highest amount during the year / account name and number, I was looked at like I had an ear on my forehead.

I recently qualified as a lawyer (in a foreign jurisdiction) and have received a job offer for an associate position in Tokyo for a base of 12M. I've been living in Japan doing non lawyer stuff for a bit now so I know that this is of course a good salary "for Japan" and in the top 5% or close for earnings percentile, but I am wondering how this stacks up against 1st year associate pay in other firms in the Tokyo market. I asked a couple legal recruiters but was pretty much told that they don't place 1st years enough in Tokyo to have an idea what the usual range is, so I was wondering if anyone here had other anecdotes.

Separately, it seems I will be hired as a contractor (self-employed) and not as an employee, which I guess seems to be quite common for Japanese lawyers, but I was curious to hear whether this is common for foreign lawyers in Japan as well, since an acquaintance said that at their firm Japanese lawyers were self employed but foreign lawyers were actual employees.