I am a US based software engineer that will complete a masters degree in AI from a japanese institution this month. My current long-term plan is to return to the US for 1-3 years to pay off debt and save up a sizable cushion in order to buy a house in Japan. After that, I want to return to Japan to settle for my remaining adult life, work for a japanese institution for long enough to earn PR through the HSFP fast track program, and then work remotely for my own online software consulting business or take remote US based software contracts.
I want to prepare mainly for 2 things
1) Purchasing a home in Japan
2) Contributing to foreign IRAs from Japan
On the first item, I want to know how people go about transferring funds to purchase a house in Japan when the money was earned abroad. As far as I understand, until I am a long term tax resident of Japan that must pay taxes on worldwide income, I only have to pay tax to Japan on foreign earned income that is remitted to or earned there. How does this work when transferring large sums to buy a house or a car? Anyway, I can legally avoid paying this tax when I transfer the funds I will use to buy my house in Japan?
2) Secondly, the majority of my retirement funds are in an American roth IRA. From what I understand, I would need to use the foreign earned income tax credit, not the exclusion, in order to have a taxable income in the USA in order to continue contributing to the IRA. Is that correct? Also, how does the totalization agreement between Japan and US social security work? I have my 40 credits for US social security, but how would the actual amounts be calculated when earning yen or earning USD assuming there will be times in my life I will do either or?
Does my long term financial and immigration plan make sense? Anything I should be aware of?
by A_Starving_Scientist