Hi all,
I’m currently finishing my last year as an ALT on the JET Programme. My job will end July 28th. My husband is on a business manager visa for a little family business we are planning on running together once my job finishes. I’ll be switching to a dependent visa with 28 hr/week permission to engage in that job once my current one ends. My husband just got his approval for that so will be starting to run the business without me the next few months.
We think my job in the business will be about 20 hours per week of work or 3-5 hours per day M-F; I will definitely need to be present at least the morning half of the day.
We have a son in daycare and would like to keep him in the daycare for a few hours each day mainly for Japanese exposure as we don’t use it in the home. And of course we won’t be able to bring him to the place of business while we’re working.
Because of needing to prove we both work for him to continue daycare, we are suddenly realizing we may need to “officially” employ me and pay me a salary for the work that I do, even though it’s a family business. This is kind of a foreign concept to us as our parents also had family businesses in our home countries but his mom and my dad weren’t paid a salary from the respective businesses. We weren’t ever planning on paying me for the jobs I will do in the business but it seems we might have to in order to keep him in daycare for a few hours each day?
Okay, some questions:
1. How much do I need to be paid in order for our son to stay in hoikuen? Is it minimum wage, or could we go lower? Is it possible to just work for the company for free or way below minimum, as it’s a family business?
2. About health insurance– I’m currently on shakai hoken and my husband and son are dependents. What’s the best move from here to keep the costs as low as possible going forward?
3. Our health insurance cards through my company do not list our middle names and I’d like to keep it this way (our names are long). Is there any special step I need to do keep the middle names off of those cards going forward?
Thanks everyone!
by PleaseHaveCompassion