Working Visa – Working Additional Job Remote

2 comments

1. >Would there be any issue with this?

   There could potentially be ***all the issues*** with this, depending on a lot of factors.

   Is the US job in line with your visa? Engineer/Specialist in Humanities covers a very broad range of jobs. If you’re working in Japan as an English teacher, but your job in the US is software development, you’re going to have issues. If you want to do a job outside of your current visa limits you need to apply for permission, and they will flat-out deny that permission for a remote gig.

   Will you be making more money with this side gig than your job in Japan? If so, it’s no longer a side gig, and you would be expected to reclassify your visa appropriately. Spoiler alert: There’s no appropriate visa for “working remotely for a foreign company”.

   Even if you’re not making more with the side gig, you will still be liable for Japanese taxes on the income. Japan considers all work done while physically in Japan to be “working in Japan”, and thus taxable. It doesn’t matter that the job is in the US, and you may well end up in a tax quagmire. Work in Japan, pay taxes in Japan.

   Are you planning on remaining an employee or switching to a contractor role? If you remain a regular employee, you will be opening your company up to tax liability and labor law compliance issues. Working in Japan long term as an employee can be considered by the government to be setting up a representative office, which can open a whole can of worms for your employers.

   Looping back to the first point: Assuming your Japanese job and US job are in the same general class, are they in the same *field*? There could be conflict of interest issues that would result in your Japanese employer being *very* unhappy with you. While it’s no longer legal for a Japanese company to forbid you from moonlighting, NDAs and non-competes are still very much a thing.

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