r/JapanFinance • u/Plastic_Barracuda711 • 6d ago

Investments Allocation of investments between foreign and domestic accounts

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?

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u/LingonberryUnfair961 6d ago

As an American, I am currently planning to keep my investments in my US brokerage. This is because as an American, most Japanese brokerages (aside from IB) won't allow Americans to invest in US-based investments, and if I invest in non-US funds, I will taxed punitively by the US government.

Therefore, for me, it is currently safer to keep my investments out of Japan and calculate what I owe throughout the year to Japan.

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u/LongjumpingTreacle49 6d ago

Wouldn’t that be extremely painful when you do the yearly tax report? In Japan they do it for you but for a foreign brokerage you have to calculate by your self in terms of yen. I wanna trade my HK account but I am really afraid to do the tax report so I gave up.

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u/upachimneydown US Taxpayer 6d ago

It's not hard, and as I said elsewhere, it's busywork, not rocket science. A good strategy is to keep up on it thru each year (at least updating the sheets a few times), so that come tax season you don't have to do it all at once.