I am planning on moving to Japan in 5 years and I am trying to establish whether I sign onto a company as a full time employee, or as a independent contractor. In order to build a history of work experience. The independent contractor option is cheaper since my employer doesn’t have an office in my home country yet, asking for full-time would cost me 9k USD from my salary (employer is footing 5k already)
I have called the immigration help desk twice. The first I did not know the correct terminology but the lady assured me that work performed “freelance” does not count, even if I work fulltime 40h per week (I have graduated). I persisted and she transferred me to another department to check, but my JP skills weren’t up to the task.
I called a second time a few days later, this time armed with some terms to use. This time I tried to mention “jyutaku” which is the JP equivalent of independent contractor or freelance work. When I called he was able to make the connection that I was asking about freelance. This time, the man asserted that freelance work, as long as I have a contract, will work. I read some posts here saying it does count and other older posts saying that freelance doesn’t count.
I read more recent posts and from what I can gather, it essentially boils down to proving that you were working and building technical skills. So what’s the case? Does freelance/independent contractor work, where I file my own taxes, with a company work?
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This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.
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**Conflicting information from immigration for HSP – does independent contractor work experience count?**
I am planning on moving to Japan in 5 years and I am trying to establish whether I sign onto a company as a full time employee, or as a independent contractor. In order to build a history of work experience. The independent contractor option is cheaper since my employer doesn’t have an office in my home country yet, asking for full-time would cost me 9k USD from my salary (employer is footing 5k already)
I have called immigration twice. The first I did not know the correct terminology but the lady assured me that work performed “freelance” does not count, even if I work fulltime 40h per week (I have graduated). I persisted and she transferred me to another department to check, but my JP skills weren’t up to the task.
I called a second time a few days later, this time armed with some terms to use. This time I tried to mention “jyutaku” which is the JP equivalent of independent contractor or freelance work. When I called he was able to make the connection that I was asking about freelance. This time, the man asserted that freelance work, as long as I have a contract, will work. I read some posts here and other older posts saying that freelance doesn’t count.
I read more recent posts and from what I can gather, it essentially boils down to proving that you were working and building technical skills. So what’s the case? Does freelance/independent contractor work, where I file my own taxes, with a company work?
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