Hi all
Although I intend to seek professional advice, I would like to have some opinions here to at least have a broad idea of what is going on.
So wife (JP citizen) and I (EU citizen, PR) bought our primary residence in Japan more than a decade ago. At that time, I didn’t realize that marriage in Japan is strictly separate property (as in my home country it is normally common property for assets acquired during marriage) and so I didn’t bother to put my name on the deed. Ever since, I have been paying the mortgage. And so recently I found out here that it should be subjected to gift tax as the yearly mortgage is more than 1.1 million yen a year because in effect I am gifting my wife the house…
In the meantime, since she didn’t have mortgage payments, she bought a couple of old properties with business loans under her name, we renovated them, and put them on the rental market, and basically these pay for themselves.
The goal would be to have 50% for each on all properties (residence and rentals), but I am not sure how to approach this without running into issues with taxes.
I have two questions:
1. Regarding our residence: how to change the percentage of ownership of it? Can you do that at will or do you need evidence? And will the tax office suddenly find strange if we suddenly make it 50/50? And basically, does she have a tax liability for the decade of not paying the mortgage on a house she owns? Would changing the ownership division erase such liability (if it exists)?
2. Concerning the rental properties: is it better to lodge them under a company (KK?) or some other legal structure? If not, as for our residence, how can we change the share of the properties?
Thank you for any pointers or insights.
by delgondo