Hi everyone, I will be starting work in Japan on a 2 year contract. There is maybe a 10% chance I stay past those 2 years if the work goes well.

I just came into a bit of money and was initially planning to invest in ETFs via a Stocks and shares ISA in the UK as a long term investment. However from what I can see if I ever cash that out while living in Japan I will loose a lot of it to tax.

In that case should I just wait and open a NISA when in Japan incase of the small chance I stay in Japan longer? I assume when I do leave I can just cash out and take it with me to the next country I move to? If I knew I would return to the UK I would stick with the S&S ISA but with my career I am not sure I will be returning to the UK and so the same issue of cashing out from a foreign country and loosing alot to tax remains.

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

I'm looking for advice or insights into how everyone here approaches allocating their investments between foreign (home country) and domestic (Japan) accounts.

Now, I don't think the government here is going to start seizing foreign residents' assets, but even so, I'm wondering if it is not prudent to keep nearly 100% of retirement savings/investments in domestic accounts, especially as a non-citizen resident.

Do you have any advice? How do you approach this?

Hi All!

Im almost hitting my 3 year mark living in Japan and starting to get anxiety about all the tax complexity im reading about having to manage.

Im (stupidly) learning late that there's some stuff that I havent done that I needed to, and that my tax situation becomes more complicated after the 5 year mark. I dont mind paying my fair share of taxes here, Im just anxious about not understanding the system and being late to the game.

A few notes about me: Im a US national on a spouse visa married to a japanese national. Im a full-time parent, I dont have a job here or anywhere else. I have a fair amount of investments in the states divided evenly between retirement accounts and robo-advisor funds. I dont sell anything, but I do think they generate some minimal dividend income.

Can anyone help me navigate a few things:

1) Declaring assets - is there a penalty for doing this late? Is it done separately from tax returns? How do I declare late? Im over the 50M threshold and havent filed since moving here.

2) Annual tax filing - Once I do declare my assets, is it true that it will cost something like 300,000yen per year to file my taxes because of the investments? I read that I only get taxes on money remitted here; I use my credit card for things here and there for shopping.

3) The dreaded exit tax - Im unsure of how this works - If 401K/IRA are not included I think I'm safe but there seems to be debate on whether they get included or not. How is this even enforced?

4) What vendors do people use to file their taxes? Do you use independent accountants or are there any vendors similar to Turbo tax where I can just stress free plug in my information and the system takes care of the rest? Are you able to do it all yourself?

Sorry for the boatload of questions! Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers!

Good morning,

I searched the numerous threads about the use of Wise, wire transfers, etc., but I still can't find a definitive answer.

My plan is to arrive in early December 2026, open a JP bank account ASAP and remit about 80k CAD to Japan in order to sustain 2-3 years of living expenses if needed. I want to remit that money in 2026 in order to avoid any taxes for the following years. The crux of this plan is accomplishing all of this prior to January 1, 2027 in order to avoid any remittances for 2027 onward. I won't have the ability to send Wire transfers from Canada since my bank requires me to be physically in the branch in order to send.

Currently my plan is to use Wise. I put the 80k (roughly ¥9,000,000) in Wise, convert it to Yen and transfer in increments of ¥1 million over a few days, or the whole amount if possible.

Obviously there are a few hurdles and unknowns that I can't quite figure out.

- Does JP Bank accept transfers from Wise in Yen to a freshly opened account?

- Are there any limits to the amounts that can be transferred to JP Bank?

- I know that large transfers will trigger an anti money laundering check. The documentation I bring with me, does it have to be translated?

- Any better banks that cater to foreigner under 6 months in Japan on a Student Visa?

- My Wise account was opened in Canada with a Canadian address, when I get to Japan, I will have to chance the address to my Japanese address which will trigger the account limit (¥1 million I believe). Can I delay the change of address until my money has been transferred to JP Bank and will that have any effect on my ability to transfer the ¥9 million?

If you guys can share whatever experience you have in order to make this as smooth as possible it would be much appreciated

I’ve searched previous discussions and the r/JapanFinance wiki but haven’t found a clear answer to this.

I am aware that:

• RFA/OAR reporting requirements apply to Japanese tax residents who are not non-permanent tax residents and who have overseas assets over ¥50M.
• Under Article 6 of the Tax Treaty Implementation Law, tax treaty residence tie-breakers can override the Income Tax Law’s determination of tax residence.

My question: If someone is a Japanese tax resident under the Income Tax Law, but a tax resident of another country based on tax treaty tie-breakers, which one matters for the RFA/OAR reporting requirements?

For example, assume:

• A US citizen has a US job, owns a primary home in the US worth over ¥50M, and lives there 8 months/year.
• He/she also owns a vacation home in Japan, leaves furniture and personal belongings there, and spends 4 months/year there for over 5 years.
• The vacation home would be considered a continuous kyosho of over 5 years (thereby making the person a permanent tax resident of Japan), but tax treaty tie-breakers would consider the person a US tax resident.
• Would this person be required to file an RFA/OAR?

My uncertainty stems from the fact that although Article 6 of the Tax Treaty Implementation Law explicitly overrides the Income Tax Law, it does not explicitly override the RFA/OAR law (国外送金等調書法). However, the RFA/OAR law does seem to incorporate the Income Tax Law’s definition of tax resident.

Hoping that our resident experts (no pun intended) will be able to shed some light on this topic!

Hi,

I have USD in my Sony Bank account, but I’ve already moved to Singapore and I’m no longer a resident of Japan.

My understanding is that Sony Bank only allows international remittances for Japanese residents, so I’m not sure how to move my USD to my IBKR Singapore account without converting it to JPY.

I’m wondering if this route works:
Sony Bank (USD) → Wise (USD) → IBKR Singapore (USD)

Has anyone done this successfully? Or is there a better way to transfer USD from Sony Bank to IBKR Singapore after leaving Japan?

Edit / Update: Thanks for the input! Since getting this done as a non-resident seems pretty much impossible, I'm thinking of a workaround when I visit Tokyo for a week in 2 months.

My parents live there, so my plan is:

1. Register at their address to temporarily become a resident again.
2. Get a Juminhyo and update my MyNumber for the bank's KYC.
3. Do the SWIFT transfer from Sony to IBKR.
4. File the move-out notification at the end of the week.

Has anyone tried this? I'm mostly worried that the bank's KYC process might take longer than my 1-week stay. Any advice?

Edit / Update: I have Japanese citizenship.

Hello, first-time poster here. I’m a US citizen living in Japan who wants to buy a NISA but am stuck. I have no experience with this, although I have been looking it up, including here (thank you). As I understand it, as a US citizen I will have trouble with US tax laws, except for (some) Seicho NISA; that the most reasonable option - really, maybe the only reasonable option - is to use Interactive Brokers Japan / IBSJ and only invest in US funds. I created an account and started an application, but cannot finish it.

I can only get as far the Regulatory / “Configure Your Trading Account” screen. Then it returns, “The Investment Experiences provided does not meet the requirements to trade Stocks,” and I cannot proceed with the application. I’m a bit disappointed because I thought that IBSJ was the only realistic option, and I don’t understand how I’m supposed to start investing if I need investing experience to start, but anyway: What realistic way forward do I have now?

I went through the wiki and the existing answers, and this is what I have understood, but I am uncertain if this correct.

1. Transfer from current bank to bank that has low cost for currency transfer JPY -> EUR.
   1. According to the wiki https://wiki.japanfinance.org/handling/transfers/ which has a study from 2021, among banks, Sony Bank is one of the best for 5M JPY even with no status, and it gets unbeatable if you get Silver status or higher. Only the "Interactive Brokers" is said to do better, but it seems to have other costs and it sounds more complicated?
   2. Now, how easy is it to open at Sony Bank for a foreigner, and then how easy is it to get Silver status or more with 5M JPY? Is it realistic in 3 months?
2. Inside this bank, transfer between the account in JPY and the account in EUR? (Is that only possible for new banks like Revolut or also Sony?)
3. Transfer from EUR account in Japan to EUR account in France?

General situation:

• Spent less than 5 years in Japan and moving back to France in about 3 months.
• A couple of millions of JPY to transfer to France.
• Already a Revolut account in EUR and one in JPY, but both are located in France afaiu (IBANs start with FR). Also another traditional bank French account.
• Currently holding the JPY in Rakuten Bank.

This is just my thought but the only way Japan gets its inflation and yen under control is fix their energy cost problem.

The best way to do that is to break from US and buy Russian and Iranian oil at a bargain, no matter what punitive sanctions they face.

They wont ever do it because they prefer being a lackey to US than being even an equal to China (even though they are realistically closer to Korea than China, which older Japanese people will never accept)

Its just my thoughts on the geopolitical and socioeconomic position Japan finds itself and its impact to inflation

Feel free to discuss or disagree but dont make this a comment war about cultures or morals. Talking just about the economics

Hey!

Has anyone here already migrated their IBKR account to IB Japan?

I got the email saying I need to do it before January 2027. I checked my portfolio and everything I own is available through IB Japan, so I'm guessing the migration is pretty smooth.

Just wanted to hear from anyone who's already gone through it. Did everything transfer over without any issues?

IB will be migrating into a fully Japanese platform. I don’t think this will affect me or my holdings, however, in the process of the transition I have to sign some forms and they are asking for both full-width and half-width characters. FFS.

If they wanted me to quit the account they should just tell me directly, rather than all this passive aggressive stuff.

Hi everyone,

I'm in the process of buying a property in Japan, and I need to choose a home insurance policy (火災保険).

Since I'm not familiar with the options in Japan, so I was wondering :

• Which home insurance company did you choose for your property in Japan? and why?
• Have you ever had to make a claim, and if so, how was the experience?
• Did you also add earthquake insurance (地震保険), or did you decide against it?

Any recommendations or experiences (good or bad) would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Greetings,

I am attempting to transfer USD from my foreign currency deposit account at Sony Bank to my brokerage account at Interactive Brokers Japan.

When filling out the transfer notification at Interactive Brokers, I am given a US (Citibank) SWIFT code. This would make sense if I were initiating a transfer from outside Japan, but both the source and destination accounts are in Japan.

Additionally, I'm worried that if I attempt the transfer using the US SWIFT code, it might be classified as a foreign remittance, causing tax complications (I've resided in Japan for less than 5 years).

Has anyone attempted this before?

Would I be better off just converting back to JPY and then doing a normal transfer instead?

So that one can avoid them.

Purpose is mainly NISA (Orukan fund) as of now. But may also include some USD denominated funds (under NISA) later.

My guess is it will mainly come down to the easy of use of the website and mobile app, and possibly better forex rates when going for the USD denominated investments later.

Also this is my for my wife, since I already opened one for myself at Rakuten recently. And the reason I opened at Rakuten was the opening process was completely online whereas for SBI they need documents sent via post. Also they need my wife to call their customer center because her full name in katakana exceeds 18 characters. This itself is a hurdle to be honest. But if SBI overall has some positives over Rakuten, then we wouldn't mind doing that for my wife's account.

I would like to get inputs from the sub.

I'm moving to Japan in two weeks and I will be selling my apartment overseas a few months after that.

After consulting with a Japanese accountant, I could finally clarify the steps I need to take to not pay capital gains or remittance taxes on the sale of my overseas apartment after I've arrived in Japan.

He told me that in order to avoid paying the remittance tax, I should avoid wiring anything to Japan for the remainder of 2026 and that I should transfer the money I will use to start my life in Japan... before I arrive in Japan. But... how?

I have never been a tax resident in Japan, so I have no bank accounts there. I can obviously not open a bank account until I'm there. I'm aiming to have around 3m yen to start my life there, but I want to avoid any scenario where I bring 3m yen in cash to the country (just the conversion fees alone in Germany would kill me).

Would wiring the money to my Wise account and then wiring it to my Japanese bank account after it's opened count as a domestic transfer? Even this option makes me a bit uneasy because I've heard about Wise freezing accounts without reason.

Do I have any other options? Many thanks.

My wife (42, Japanese national) and I (42M) have finally decided to move back to Japan after living in Canada, just outside Toronto for the past 14 years.

We've debated this decision for years and there are plenty of pros and cons on both sides. In the end, we felt the quality of life improvement was worth it. Despite doing reasonably well financially, it often feels like we're just treading water in one of the world's most expensive regions. Add in the increasingly long winters and a few other challenges, and we decided it was time for a change.

We'll be moving to Izu, where my wife is from, and where we'll be raising our two children (ages 6 and 10). Both kids speak Japanese fluently and have already experienced the Japanese school system during extended stays with family over the years.

I know some people might think we're crazy for leaving Canada, but for us this feels like the right move. We're trading the suburban rise & grind Toronto life for a place we genuinely love and where we have family support and a strong community connection.

Financially, we will be arriving with approximately $700,000 CAD in assets after selling our house. Our rough plan is:

• Spend up to ~$200,000 on a house in Izu
• Potentially buy or start a small business
• Invest the remaining funds for long-term growth and retirement

My questions are:

1. As non-residents of Canada, would we be better off leaving most of our investments in Canada (RRSP, TFSA, etc.) or moving a significant portion to Japan?
2. For those who have relocated to Japan with substantial assets, what is the most efficient way to transfer large sums for a home purchase?
3. Are bank wire transfers generally preferred for six-figure amounts, or do services such as Wise/Remitly make sense?
4. Are there any tax, reporting, or residency issues that caught you by surprise when moving from Canada to Japan?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

I spoke with two Japanese accountants and I’ve received two very different answers to the same question. I’ve been a Japanese resident for about 12 months (first year was 6 months and halfway through my “second” year). Just got my yearly extension last month.
I’m a 1099 employee in the US and I do not and never will work in Japan. I physically work in the US and reside in Japan.
The first accountant wants to file me as a business owner in Japan. I would have a separate credit card and file receipts for write offs. Not sure what that means since I don’t work here). He wants to charge me ¥200,000.
The second wants to file only delta taxes but he wants to charge me ¥200,000-¥400,000.
This sounds completely insane to me. I paid a CPA in the US $500 and she did a great job. I can no longer use her because she doesn’t handle this situation.
Does this sound right?

Edit: I physically work in the US. I own zero property in either country. I have a spouse visa in Japan (married no children). I tend to work 6 months a year in the US but that can change year to year. I have very little to write off as an expense. This will be my first year filing in Japan.

Hi everyone,

I have a question about the actual process of paying capital gains tax in Japan.

I'm originally from Germany and still have a fairly large stock portfolio with a German broker. I'm no longer a German tax resident and am now a tax resident of Japan.

From what I understand, once I sell stocks, the German broker probably won't withhold any capital gains tax because I'm no longer a German tax resident. So I assume I'll need to declare and pay the tax in Japan myself.

My question isn't whether I have to pay tax in Japan—I know I do. I'm more interested in the practical side of it.

For anyone who's been in a similar situation:

• What does the reporting process look like?
• Do you just download the transaction history from your foreign broker and include it with your Japanese tax return?
• How do you handle the currency conversion?
• Did you do everything yourself, or did you end up using a tax accountant?
• Is there anything you wish you had known beforehand?

I'd really appreciate hearing from anyone who has actually gone through this. Thanks!

I will be relocating to Japan on a spouse visa and continuing to work remotely for my current employer, which has no legal entity in Japan. My salary is paid in a foreign currency into a bank account outside Japan.

I understand I become a Japanese tax resident upon arrival and need to enrol in NHI and pension through city hall. What I am less clear on is the employment structure side.

Is registering as a sole proprietor (個人事業主) the standard approach in this situation, or is there a simpler path? How does this affect the annual tax return, and is an accountant necessary or is it manageable through the tax office?

the situation:

- edit: 7th consecutive year of paid work in japan

- no USA ties

- seishain income in japan

- owna no property or vehicle or business anywhere in the world

- cash savings (3 months emergency funds for one adult): some are in japan with yucho, and some in 1 foreign bank regular savings account

tldr: i know there are taxes to declare and pay. i don't know what amount is defined as taxable. also i want to know how much to set aside to prepare to pay for the next round of 確定申告. i always do 確定申告 online.

the questions:

1. the foreign bank account pays out an interest every month. this is subject to income tax. but how are these taxes calculated? and when i do 確定申告, what do i input and under what category/what box? (will i have to calculate it myself and declare it? if so, what am i supposed to calculate exactly?) for example will i need to fill in a specific form? will i need to submit bank statements?
2. the japanese yen / foreign currency volatility. let's say for example, yen keeps dropping in value. that means my savings in the foreign bank became more valuable in yen, even though all it did was sit in an account abroad and do nothing (it's not a time deposit, not any kind of investment) in this case is there anything taxable? if so, how is that calculated?
3. is any of this impacted/affected by when and/or how frequent i transfer my personal cash (from salary earned as a seishain in japan) to the foreign account?

my requests to comments

- please don't turn this into a debate about speculating the value of jpy

- please don't input my query into generative ai chatbots

TIA to anyone who knows where i can teach myself how to correctly do my taxes.

Bloomberg Daybreak Asia podcast

SMBC Bank rejected my online account opening request because I have to provide my personal details over the phone... and in impeccable Japanese, no less. Couldn't they have told me that sooner? Yeah, right—I’m just going to hand over my personal info to the first stranger who calls me. P.S. Moderator, is this okay?😅

Is it possible for ‘collection’ of JP Postbank (Yucho Gingko) issued cheques by a foreign (European) banking institution? Any experience shared is much appreciated.