Hi
I'm actually a student in a Japanese university. First I want to talk a bit about my situation just to spit it out, I'll put the questions related to the title at the end so you can skip the part where I talk about my life if you want, that's the real point anyway 😀
Because of some mental troubles, I'm unable to work in a job with a lot of social contacts such as work with clients or phone calls, which limit a lot what I can do for my part time job.
Since I got a N1 with a correct score and am interested in traduction since I started to learn Japanese, I got the opportunity to work as a game translator for 6 months in 2022, and I'm actually doing game translation check in another company.
My first job was ideal for me, I could work one day on week end and some short shifts during the week, everything at home, I really enjoyed the content of the job and was doing well but my company looked for people able to work at full time (they accepted to give me a chance to pass the recruitment test because a member of the French team was a friend of a friend), and when I was unable to work for a few weeks due to mental problems they used that as an excuse to not prolongate my contract.
After that, I really struggled with money but could not find a company in this field of work that could accept a student unable to work as full time during the week, despite applying to everything I could find on internet. I got a few interviews and some companies were really interested but they basically asked me to come back after graduation.
I found this year my actual job, it's not translation but it's still related, I check the quality of the translation and the display in game, the content is cool but the problem is that basically since I'm not full time they only call me when they need a LOT of people in the French team on a specific project, and since they need me to work a full day I can only work once a week (if they have job for me), and in top of that I have to go there in the middle of Tokyo which takes a lot of time for me, so basically it's not enough to pay my rent and going to the office only once and then put a lot of mental pressure on me when I'm there.
It's especially frustrating because I actually have a lot of time available to work, I don't have much class and litteraly don't do a lot even when I'm at school, but because the only job I was able to find require me to do a full day it's a pure waiste of time, and I also have a lot of anxiety problems and I often need to rest because I don't feel able to go to the office to work even though I'm not sick or anything, so I often waste days when I could have work and I struggle even more financially.
That's why I thought I may need to start to work as a freelance to make a better use of my empty time and being able to manage when I want to work a lot depending of my school without having to justify myself.
I guess translation into French is not really a field that will make me work a lot anyway, I just want to get 40/50k a month to pay my rent and that would be fine for me.
And now come the questions I wanted to ask, thank you for those who read about my boring life !
I checked online and it seems I need to send a 開業届 to my local tax office to notify them that I start my own stuff, I also read that by writing 青色申告承認申請書 I can get a tax reduction but here come the first question :
I'm not paying income taxes right now because my yearly income is very low, under 500k a year, and even as a freelance I would probably not go over that, so in that case I don't have to submit the second one ? Or should I submit it anyway in case my income increase in the future ?
Also how does it works for the work hours, I am limited to 28 hours a week but as a freelancer, how do you prove that you are not going over the limit ?
And my last question is about the income declaration, I read that you have to do everything by yourself and because of that should keep track of every expenses, income etc…
Keeping track of everything suddenly is quite overwhelming, is there some ressources that can help to understand better how to do it correctly (with a spredsheet or things like that) ?
Also about the first declaration that will come at the end of this fiscal year, I guess I have to get my income sheet from my actual company to include my income until now in the declaration ?
I'm sorry for the very long post, I'm just feeling a bit overwhelmed by the amount of informations and stuff to do when switching to working as a freelance, especially in a busy period like this one :')
by Popipz