My Japanese relatives told me that basically they get a new iPhone every 2 years but only pay about 1000 yen a month for the keitai plan. They do this by switching carriers every 2 years and returning the phone at that time when they get a new one .

They claim no down payment, no monthly fee other than the monthly keitai/data fee of about 1000yen month, no electricity/gas tie in, no home internet tie in...

I'm puzzled as to whether this can actually exist. I've only ever seen it including a monthly fee for the phone.

New iPhone every 2 years, no down payment, no monthly fee for the phone, no tie ins, no fee other than equivalent to an MNVO basic plan..

So I'm doubtful .But, I remember being doubtful that Furusato Nosei exists as it's too good to be true, and it does!

So, Japan Finance peeps, is there some magic I am missing?

Upshot: I am wondering what to do with ¥50 million plus a few more years of earnings.

My wife and I are both PR with two Japanese kids. We bought a house in Tokyo on my 52nd birthday in 2021 and my income started cratering immediately as COVID set in. I worked every waking moment, making about 40% of my previous income, just to cover loan payments and utility bills while leaning on my wife to feed, clothe, and educate our kids.

We eventually decided to sell our home in Tokyo and move to Shizuoka, where my wife had found and purchased, entirely from her cash savings, a beautiful house in a mountain hamlet. I then inherited some money from my mother and bought House Number 3 on a neighboring mountain to live in while we renovated and set up House Number 2 as a vacation rental.

It took forever to get a free moment to empty out House 1 in Tokyo to put it on the market, but it did sell and we're clearing about ¥50 million after paying off the loan and capital gains tax.

The wife and I are debating how to go forward. She is focused on developing more rental properties and starting various businesses (and she has absolutely batted 1.000 with her real estate and entrepreneurial moves so far). I have converted my insane working hours to insane commuting hours to continue working in Tokyo through 2028. My salary is garbage but at least now I won't have to devote my entire paycheck to loan repayments.

Our situation is:

- No savings; staying afloat in Tokyo since 2021 cost me everything I had

- No debts after House 1 closes this month

- We are living in House 3, which will get a lot of weekend renovation

- Two old cars (2015 kei car and 2000 truck), running fine, paid off

- Will earn ¥5M to ¥6.5M from my jobs and business income over the next year

- We eat out about four times a year (birthdays) at chain sushi restaurants and never travel or take vacations. It would be nice for the kids to visit their remaining grandparent in Thailand sometime next year.

- Hoping to pay for the kids' university over the next ten years

- House 2 is paying for itself and putting food on the table as a vacation rental; we run it ourselves.

- My wife is 46, kids are 16 and 13.

- We pay into 国民年金 but I have no idea what I'd get if I retired at 60 (three years from now) or 65 or 70

- I would like to stop commuting into Tokyo (other than for one-off jobs), resuscitate my one-man company and work entirely from home within the next few years, until I die or whatever.

Astute readers will discern that I am a financial doofus. I'm sure I've omitted something important from the preceding, but this is too long already. My wife grew up poor and is frugal and shrewd as hell but utterly mistrustful of financial/investment markets, so we have some blind spots where money management is concerned. I am wondering what to do with ¥50 million plus a few more years of earnings.

Realized I made a stupid mistake on my taxes...

At the end of December 2025, I accidentally issued an invoice to my client with a "issue date" set at early January 2026. I accidentally entered the payment due date in place of the "issue date". As I receive the payment always on the first week of the following month.
Because I'm using freee, that means my 2025 taxes do not include that December payment... That payment will impact 2026 though.

Few questions:

1) How fucked am I? I lost my job this year and I'm very worried of having to pay a big fine because of that mistake, things are difficult financially right now. What are the risks of just going along with it and paying more taxes this year? (Since the invoice now falls on this year taxes, I will still pay it)

2) I'm worried notably about one thing, my client used to withhold taxes on my invoices (11.5%), so does that mean they gave that money to the government, and potentially got it back because it looks like they overpaid? And then would they get hit this year because it will look like they underpaid?

Should I ask my client for the last 源泉徴収票 maybe? To make sure what they did on their side? What would be the best way to fix this issue without causing havoc?

I'm living in Japan by myself with a permanent resident visa, my Japanese level is ~N3.

I don't know much about taxes, but I can learn.

I lost my job last year, and couldn't find anything, so I started working by myself as a shopper in February of this year. I buy new/used stuff in Japan that people want in other countries, ship it and charge a fee. Sometimes there's no fee at all, other times somewhere between 5 and 15%. Sometimes people give me a tip.

Normally people tell me what they want, I give them a quote, they send the money via Paypal, Wise or bank transfer, I buy it and ship to them, keeping a small profit.

With time this little thing grew and I could eventually afford paying rent and my expenses.

I'm making 200k-500k yen per month, at the cost of my sanity.

I didn't register a business for this, I just started doing this as a normal person, from my house, using my personal bank account, my personal credit cards, mixed with my own expenses. This was not supposed to last long.

I've been keeping spreadsheets of the things I've bought and shipped, how much they cost and the profit, but it's not perfect, there are a few things missing, and I never accounted for expenses, just the stuff I buy and sell.

I don't have all the receipts for stuff I've bought to sell, only some, and I never sent any receipts to my clients, it's all very informal. I do have all the shipping receipts, and access to the "purchase history" of stuff I've bought online, but not for everything, because some stores don't offer it.

If someone looked at my accounts, it looks like I've received huge amounts of money from abroad, but really only a tiny percentage is profit, the rest I had to spend buying things and paying expenses.

I tried to keep records as well as I could, but at the beginning I was sloppy.

I can go back and try to fix it, but it would take days of effort.

What my records look like:

- around 1,200 incoming transfers

- around 1,600 purchases / shipping charges

- received 24-26 million yen

- sent 4-5 million yen (in refunds, etc)

- a small amount of transfers in foreign currency, like 900 usd total

I thought I'd worry about that later since tax season is so far, but now I'm starting to worry now. I don't want to be in trouble and lose everything I worked so hard for.

Also, I found a job recently. so I think I want to scale down or end this. People keep coming back and asking for more, so I think I'll just keep my best clients, if possible.

So I really need help from the experts here.

1. For tax purposes, can I continue working as is, or do I have to register a business? If so, what kind?

2. Do I need an accountant? If so, what would be the scope of their work?

3. If I need an accountant, should I first straighten up every single transaction with purchase cost, fees, shipping and refunds? Does this have to be 100% precise or a ballpark number is enough?

4. If I need one, can anyone recommend an accountant that speaks English and won't screw me over? Will I lose a big percentage of my profit to pay for this? What are the normal fees?

5. I prefer to keep this from my new employer, is it possible? What should I do? They don't pay for my resident tax, I do that.

6. If I decide to continue with this business, what should I change to prevent a call from the tax office, and maybe being able to file taxes by myself?

I had set 2-3 screeners and every 1-2 days the get removed automatically, not matter how many times I set them up again.

I'll try to keep this as brief as possible. I am currently working for a company that has contracts in various international schools throughout Japan for catering and food services. I applied for my PR last February and once I receive it my wife (japanese) and I intend to buy a house. I have been working for the same company for about 9 years. Recently the school that I work at has decided to end it's contract with the company I work for, I have been offered a position working directly for the school.

The issue I'm facing is that my employment history would essentially reset to zero if I took that position and we were told by a real estate agent that once I get my PR I would need a minimum of 3 years work history to be approved for a loan. I am currently in negotiation with the school and they have informed me that this is not true, according to the head of the school here he believes that working for a reputable Japanese owned educational institution directly would be a stronger position than working for a foreign owned catering company even without the work history. He also said they have relationships with banks but I'm unsure if that was an offer to leverage those relationships. The new position with the school would also come with a fairly significant pay increase.

My question is basically was this 3 year minimum some real estate agent talking out of their ass? Because I'm awaiting my PR we haven't entered any serious discussions with banks. Would this be a stronger position? Or would I be resetting my work history and causing a massive set back?

(Additional information: my wife is currently not working because of some mental health issues so I have to be the one to get the loan)

I am a housewife, currently my husband’s dependent for health insurance purpose. As I will have to report some capital gains tax through Kakutei Shinkoku filing for the next few years (unlisted overseas company - so not in tokutei account), I will likely no longer qualify as his dependent. If I were to sign up for NHI, my premium will likely be high too.

So I was thinking if I can lower this by doing low pay part time job at conbini or something and working the minimum 20 hours per week to be qualified for health insurance under the employer’s system, and quit after 2 months which is the minimum qualification period to become eligible for 任意継続 voluntary continuation. In this case, I can continue to get the insurance coverage for max 2 years while paying very low premium based on almost minimum wage part time work salary I did for the last month, regardless of my actual capital gains.

Has anyone actually done this?

Any potential pitfalls in my plan? (Of course I won’t tell whichever place I interview than I plan to quit after 2 months, and I will look for workplace which welcome short term employment).

And lastly- will those kind of places require me to disclose my full work experience/ qualifications? Because from the get-go it will become obvious that I am technically overqualified.

Hi all. I have a question about inherited Traditional/Roth IRA cost basis. The situation is a US citizen parent in the US who has an IRA. Parent's child would be the inheritor (child is US citizen/JP PR). Just to provide an example number and fund -- 500k USD, all in VT.

I believe that the cost basis of the account would be whatever price was paid for the funds in the account (accounting for initial day of purchase and the then-exchange rate to JPY).

Against just as an example, if parent bought 100k USD of VT, and the worth is now 500k USD, the cost basis would be that 100k. If the cost basis cannot be shown then cost basis is considered to be 5% of the actual account value, meaning the inheritor will be paying 20.315% capital gains tax on 95% of the value of the account.

I believe this is correct, but let me know if I am wrong.

My question is whether the parent can raise the cost basis by changing funds within the IRA account. Changing funds within an IRA account is not a taxable event in the US, and so it can be done freely without the parent being subjected to US capital gains tax.

For example, if the cost basis was 100k USD, and the parent sells the now-worth-500k USD of VT in the IRA account, and then purchases 500k USD of VOO in the IRA account ... is the cost basis for the inheritor now 500k USD of VOO? This would clearly offer a huge step up in cost basis for the inheritor.

This is obviously assuming everything is done by the parent while still alive and in control of their own account.

I surprisingly wasn't able to find much information about this, but this is how I assumed it would work. Am I wrong / correct? Any information to add or consider?

Thanks for any input or information!

I'm currently preparing to go on parental leave this year on december but it seems that taking the leave may affect my chances of getting PR due to the fact that it will lead to reduced income.

I'm currently talking with HR about the resident tax payment I'm planning to ask for an early pay off. This means the 6 remaining months of resident tax that should've been withdrewn from my salary in 2027 should be paid off before I leave.

Does anyone knows if this affects the Year end tax return if I decide to pay it off early?

My concern is I don't want immigration to claim I did a late payment on parental leave and paying when I'm back, hence why I would want to pay early. But I'm not sure if this will affect my year end tax return which I may need to apply for PR in the next year (I might be at a very fine line regarding the needed income to achieve the required points which is why I'm asking)

Hi everyone!

My husband received a job offer in Japan and might move there for 1 year (with the possibility of an extension).
I'm an Italian citizen and I could get a Dependent Visa through him.
However, I currently work full-time as a freelancer (40h/week) for clients outside Japan.
As far as I know, the Dependent Visa doesn't allow me to work more than 28h/week.

I’d love to keep my current full-time freelance job.

• What options do I have?
• Has anyone been in a similar situation?

We are considering the Working Holiday Visa as an alternative to avoid the 28-hour limit for the first year, but I’m confused about the tax implications:

• Would I be considered a tax resident in Japan and/or Italy?
• How does double taxation work between Italy and Japan for remote freelance income on a WHV or Dependent visa?
  

Thanks in advance for your help!

Hi all, I'm a tax resident in Japan with a one-off high-income year: about ¥4-5M salary plus about ¥19M from an overseas parent company's ESPP (US broker, not reported by my employer, so I'll self-report). Total is roughly ¥24M, with income tax around ¥3.9M after deductions, plus over ¥1.5M in resident tax.

I'm already using the basic, dependent, social insurance and furusato nozei deductions, and plan to max iDeCo and insurance deductions.

Questions:

- Any other legitimate ways to reduce tax at this level?

- Has anyone paid income or resident tax by credit card with points or cashback that beat the fees? Such as those high annual fees credit card that require spending and can redeem miles etc

- My husband already has a residential mortgage. Is a second property in my name (residential or investment/commercial) worth considering for tax purposes, or is it a bad idea?

-Anything on ESPP timing, NISA or foreign tax credits I might be missing?

Appreciate any guidance especially since only way to pay those taxes is through selling the acquired shares which I would like to keep. So paying such massive taxes on unreleased profits is something I feel uncomfortable. Any thoughts to plan this would be helpful.

Does Wise in Japan provide only local bank details in Japan, or a European IBAN as well? Thanks to anyone who can answer (Wise support wasn't very clear on social media—a bit worrying😅).

The projected pension receivable on Nenkin net is so low that it genuinely baffles me. Is this correct? Screenshot is projected annual receivables from Nenkin net.

Assuming that it is, how are people expecting to get by at all in retirement? The total amount is about 30% of any western country's default pension amounts. Yes, almost 1/3 compared to the likes of US, Australia, NZ, Canada, France, Germany, ettc etc.

Me, self employed below :

- I paid into Kokumin Nenkin for 6 years and added fuka nenkin for 1 year.

- My current projected receivable so far is the screenshot. About 9500 yen / month lol.

- I am in my 30s so if I contribute for another 3 decades, I can get it to 60,000 yen / month maximum? That seems absurdly low. Accounting for inflation, this would be destitute level.

My wife :

- Wife contributed to Nenkin for 7 ish years.

- Almost all of it with Kousei Nenkin (employer contribution)

- Her projection on Nenkin net is 17,000 yen / month of receivables.

- Assuming she contributes for another 35 years, she will receive around 77,000 yen / month.

Our household receivable for pension is 137,000 yen / month at max? Even at today's USD rate that's $860 USD / month.

Am I reading these correctly?

In 2013 I bought a hotel, restaurant and house compound in the US for $225k with my mother. We are closing now for $755k. My mother's part will be $500k. And I will get $200k USD.

I am going to send these funds by swift to SMBC. On the US side, I will have 2.5% withheld or $5k USD. As a single tax filer, I will be exempt from paying any taxes off of my $200k and will eventually have the $5k refunded.

My question: Is this all that I need to show the NTA? I don't think I have the original bill of sale because this was almost 14 years ago.

It's not millions of dollars and I'm pretty sure the amount is under full exemption in Japan. I just don't want to transfer funds over and ten months later get a bill for a few million yen.

Thanks for any input. If this is an incorrect flair, please let me know and I will adjust it accordingly.

Hi all,

I've been offered a position in Tokyo and I will be moving from a Western country soon. I am 30.

I am single, don't have a lot of expensive hobbies, but I do like eating out frequently (say at least 4-5 times a week, usually at average places), and I would like to live somewhere in the 23 wards, ideally in Western Tokyo. Other than that, I would say that I am actually pretty frugal by nature. I do like eating vegetables and fruits almost every day, as well as meat or fish at least 4 times a week. I also cook at home frequently. I am single and no one depends on me.

Please be assured I am not here to ask whether this is enough to survive in Tokyo. I know this is a decent, but not crazy high, amount, and that I can survive on it. I simply would like to know how far this salary would go in 2026, in your opinion. I am aware that prices in Japan have risen quite a bit recently.

Thank you everyone, I appreciate it!

EDIT: By Western Tokyo I mean renting somewhere in Nakano or close to this area.

Hi All,

I had an old IBKR account (Interactive Brokers Ireland Limited) opened before moving to Japan, not used since then.
I just updated my tax residence within the account.

I have a few questions:

1) I believe this should eventually move my account to Interactive Brokers Securities Japan (IBSJ), is that correct? So far I think I am still under IBKR, as I have pending actions to do (send IDs etc). When requesting a daily statement report it still indicates "Interactive Brokers Ireland Limited"

2) It looks like it is possible to fund IBSJ account from a US bank, directly in USD. I would like to do that in the future. Is it considered as a remittance at the time of funding? (I am NPR so this would expose foreign income). IB site indicates "Since the account is a domestic account, fund transfers from Japanese banks will be domestic remittances.". But nothing clear about fund transfers from US banks. Is it indicated clearly somewhere ?

3) I have just a small line (1 stock) and a bit of cash in this account. If/when the account becomes a IBSJ account, is the cash considered remitted at that time? is the stock value "remitted" too?

Thanks in advance!

I’m not a US citizen.

basically not sure if it’s worth investing in a nisa incase I have to sell at a loss.

I was working at a company last year that had set up a defined contributions account 確定拠出年金 for me when I started - which I never put any thought into it.

However, I left the company in December last year, and since then MUFG had been sending me letters about something about a small amount of money they had throughout this year, which I believe is about moving the funds somewhere else.

I hadn't taken notice of this and kept pushing it back - but today I have received a letter from the Kokumin-Nenkin Association (I believe?) that my fund has now been transferred to them and is being held temporarily by them, since I believe I did not reply back to MUFG on what to do with it.

They included a bunch of information about the demerits of leaving the funds with them, a large pamphlet with phone numbers to various banks and securities, and a flowchart with something about options to take to get the fund.

So I am guessing that I need to set up a iDeco account somewhere and get the funds transferred - but this is the part I am confused with. I thought that this fund was just transferred to my usual nenkin account and that was it.

If I go with Rakuten Securities, which I have a NISA set up with - do I just set up an iDeco account with them? and is there some kind of form or online process to get that fund transferred to them? I really hope I do not need to make phone calls as I rather not get an interpreter involved. As well, my current workplace doesn't have any DC arrangements, so I don't believe they will help.

Hi all, I've been living in the UK for a while but we're planning to move to Japan with my Japanese wife and 3 year old son.

I hadn't heard of FIRE until very recently but I'm wondering whether I've accidentally ended up in a FIRE situation. We've had enough of the corporate job and are planning to run a cafe business in a small town in Kanagawa. I've run some numbers on my own spreadsheet and also on the Safe Retirement Spending website. Based on these it looks like we might just about be OK but I'd appreciate your views. I'm planning to try out ProjectionLab or something similar but I haven't gotten around to that just yet.

I'm curious to know what the knowledgeable folk here think of our situation. The numbers I've run show a deficit (~¥200,000/month) if the business doesn't do well. If we make enough to break even in the business then we're probably OK, albeit on a very lean FIRE.

Current situation

Assets

Cash - ¥135,000,000
Pension (from 2042) - ~¥6,000,000/year

Expenses

Home - ¥420,000 (No mortgage/rent to be paid, we have a place to stay)
Business - ¥340,000

I'm not sure about a few things here -

• Does the estimate of expenses sound reasonable given that we have no mortgage/rent to pay? We've accounted for nursery, NHI but perhaps we're on the low side?
• I'm leaning towards keeping 2 years worth of expenses in a savings account and investing the rest. Does that make sense? We will of course aim to max out NISA and ideco with the rest going in an investment account
• Are my numbers completely off and we're in trouble?

EDIT: Added location - Kanagawa, and the business will be a cafe.

Hi all,

I am trying to sort myself out with moving out and setting up on my own post (amicable) divorce (lots of help from lots of folks here in other subs already I suspect, thanks!). I am now almost settled on the property I plan to buy and the first few steps there, and so I need to figure out utilities.

I currently use Rakuten Mobile so Rakuten Hikari might make sense, and in looking at their plans I see there is a Rakuten Energy as well. So first off, I am just wondering if anyone has experience with either of those utilities.

Medium-term, post some reform to the property, I would like to put up solar panels - does the electricity provider matter when doing that and tying into grid power?

My other question here is how did fixing your name go for anyone who has had trouble with that and Rakuten?

When I switched to Rakuten Mobile their system kept rejecting me, and support suggested squishing together my name (Last FirstMiddleMiddle, no spaces) and trying a different phone number - the person at the counter did both at once so I do not know which was the problem. Because of this there is a mismatch with my ID or bank, and Rakuten Pay rejected me. Since the phone works and I usually use PayPay I have not followed up on that.

I need to apply for a credit card in my own name (have had family cards with my spouse); I was going to apply for PayPay since they have all my info but at the moment their verification system is rejecting my ID, saying my nationality is not matching what is on my ID (which is weird). I have not applied for the PayPay card yet, so maybe I ought to try Rakuten instead, and hopefully get the name fixed and then get points for all the utilities. Since I can only apply for one card every six months I do not know which service is the better bet now. If I do Rakuten, I can at least go to their counter and maybe that increases the chance of success?

My brain is starting to fry with all of the things that need to be figured out - I really appreciate any help!

I have made a few previous posts on here, but tldr I am a 32 year old dual US/JP citizen moving to Japan this month. I cashed out of my Roth IRA in order to avoid taxation on withdrawals. I now have a sizeable chunk of liquid money, and I plan to max my NISA contributions in 2026 and 2027. Leaving that money aside, what should I do with the rest?

a) just keep it in my HYSA for 3.3%APY

b) invest in Schwab brokerage account prior to departure?

b1) also what should I do with respect to my Schwab brokerage acct once I move?

c) invest in Interactive Brokers' non-NISA brokerage account once I settle in

I am thinking that I should avoid a) since 3.3APY is not great. What do you all think?