I recently found out that my boyfriend has never paid income tax on his earnings in Japan despite the fact that he has an income. This is not the result of some clever tax avoidance scheme. He genuinely had no idea what income tax was and that he is obligated by law to pay it, until I pointed it out a couple of weeks ago.
He has been self employed for most of his life and lived off his inheritance until about 5 years ago. Last year he earned about 15 million yen.
He doesn’t seem to grasp how serious this is, and is now trying to argue that he is protesting the government by not paying. Whenever I try to broach the topic he accuses me of having a salaryman mindset and tell me that lots of people avoid taxes. What makes it worse is that he hasn’t even filed the paperwork to operate as a 個人事業主 (freelancer in English, I guess?).
None of the arguments he has used to defend this massive oversight is logical or convincing.
How do I make him understand the gravity of the situation? Can accountants help in this instance? What are the consequences if this is not addressed?
I’m so stressed about this and sad and angry that he is being so blasé and dismissive of my concerns.
Edit:
Thank you all for the comments. I’m honestly a bit overwhelmed by this but trying to stay levelheaded. It’s clearly a matter of time before he is caught. It’s going to be very costly to fix this but not impossible. To those of us with common sense, it’s so obvious that death and taxes are 2 inevitabilities of life that we all must contend with. My boyfriend somehow missed this lesson and will have to learn the hard way eventually. I know it sounds unbelievable, and it’s easy to imagine he might be some kind of drug dealing evil scammer, but he’s not. He’s extremely naive, grew up very privileged, has ADHD and sucks at doing admin for his business. He is very smart in a niche field, which is why he makes a decent living. He hates paperwork, has no idea how to do it and has a tendency to avoid difficult things he has no interest in. It’s that simple.
I am giving him the chance to take steps to rectify this. I love him and paying a tax fine isn’t a dealbreaker for me. I doubt this is jail-level, given he didn’t earn very much at all in the previous years and he was living off his inheritance for the majority of his adult life. If he chooses to stay in denial and refuse to take my concerns seriously then I don’t see how this relationship has a future. I hope he will urgently get professional advice to get out of this mess and learn/grow from this. Whether or not I’ll be around to support him through this is entirely up to him now.
by Soggy-Aerie-7406
