I signed an independent consulting contract to provide some services to a private university and they sent me an invoice template to use that auto-calculates 10% 税額. I checked the contract and it indeed says 「甲は、毎月末締め、翌月末日までに、本件報酬に消費税を付加」, basically "yeah we are tacking on the consumption tax".
a) I'm kind of curious why sales tax applies to independent contractor labor, like what's the tax/legal principle there. Just mild curiosity — like, why am I collecting sales tax like I'm a store 🙂 Japan work noob stuff…
b) More importantly– I assume I need to hang onto this and hand it over to the government later, right, it being a tax and all?
I will get an accountant to help with such stuff later too of course — but I've actually been hearing horror stories from people I've met here about their Japanese accountants screwing up, which led to loan denials and stuff, so I want to in parallel learn more too to be more on guard. Thanks for sharing your experience.
by manzoido