Sorry, I know similar things have been asked and I looked at many tax sites but I really don’t understand. Not a language issue but a nomenclature issue.
I make around 3,000,000 a year from my main job. I have a small job where I get max ¥80000 a year. I get tax forms and I’m sure they do there side of it too. They are a large English testing company… Maybe some Mericari a little but not much. I often hear that no need to worry of under ¥220,000. So I haven’t.
Do I need to file taxes for this side income?
While the above is a legit question, I mainly wanted to ask because I was thinking about starting videography/video editing on a site like Fiverr or the Japanese equivalent. At first it will be nickel and dimes I make but if it takes off, I’ll need to do taxes. If fiverr I would need to do US taxes and if other then Japanese right? Or can I do both with Japanese forms?
Sorry, this second question is a little bit not straight forward.
2 comments
Yes you need to declare this income on a tax return.
Which type of tax return depends on your circumstance and amount or side income:
1) Final tax return: As you’re considered a “wage earner” should you have a reason to file a final tax return then you MUST file a final tax return. Which means including ALL your *taxable* income sources and then this means incurring both income tax and resident tax on that income. Reasons for “wage earners” to file a final tax return are outline here: https://www.nta.go.jp/english/taxes/individual/12018.htm
Worth noting: if you do Furusato Nozei and don’t /can’t do 1-stop submission then you will need to file a final tax return to include your Furosato Nozei donations. Which means, as I stated above, declaring everything on a final tax return.
OR
2) Resident tax return: As a “wage earner”, should you not need to file a final tax return (see point 1) then should your aggregated total of ALL “side income” be <¥200,000 you can just declare the “side income” on a resident tax return at the municipality office to incur resident tax on it. This is because the “¥200,000” exemption is for income tax only. No such exemption exists for resident tax.
“Side income” = income from sources that are not defined as “employment income” or “pension income”. An example of “side income” would be “miscellaneous income”, or “dividend income”, or “real estate income”, or “capital gain income”, or “interest income”, or “temporary income” etc etc
Of course you are free to file a final tax return (even if not required). Personally I prefer this because 1) I can do it online using eTax so no need to take time off work to go to city office to file resident tax return, 2) there is not national standard way of doing a resident tax return I.e each municipality is unique, and 3) I hate going to my city office because they are a bunch of incompetent fuck whits who have no idea how to do their job and always cause me issues every time I go there so I dread to think how much stress filing a resident tax return there would cause me 😅…. So I just take the income tax hit for the tax years when my taxable side income exceeds ¥200,000
Also taxes a side, what status of residency are you on? If a work visa then You want to make sure you have the required right/permission to work additional jobs from immigration.
Not declaring income and getting audited will look poorly on your visa renewal, you don’t want to risk that. Make sure you always declare everything clearly