Hi, my wife and I have made it a goal to see if we can move to Japan for an unforeseeable amount of time. I’m just wanting to see if I can get on the right track for this. My background:
I’m a 27 M married to a 29 F Japanese national (has both U.S. and Japanese citizenship/passports). My grandmother is (technically was) a Japanese citizen who moved to the U.S. many years ago. I’ve lived in Japan before for about 2 years and am currently visiting my grandmother’s relatives right now in Japan via a visitor’s visa. I work as a Web AR developer, having about 2 years of experience in mostly front-end web development and a BA in CS and minor in Japanese. I can speak Japanese pretty fluently, at least in conversational situations (no experience in business in Japanese). I don’t have trouble getting around by myself, etc.
That being said, doing some research, if I wanted to work remotely for an American company such as my current one, it sounds like I would need a work visa instead of just some kind of spouse visa. If I can work for a u.s. company while in Japan, how do taxes work, for both countries? What other things would I need to consider? Any help to get me on the right track would be appreciated! We’ve though mostly about living in maybe either Osaka or the Tokyo Kanagawa areas.
7 comments
Uh, spouse visa is just fine for what you’re wanting to do. In fact it’s much more powerful in terms of work opportunities. For instance you don’t need the company to sponser your visa to work for a company oversees on a spouse visa compared to a work one. You can even start your own company if you wanted to.
>That being said, doing some research, if I wanted to work remotely for an American company such as my current one, it sounds like I would need a work visa instead of just some kind of spouse visa.
If your wife is a Japanese National you can do remote work on your visa no problem. Incidentally, if your grandma is Japanese you could easily get a long term resident visa that would also allow you to do remote work
I work for a US company while on a spouse visa in Japan. You’re fine, you just gotta pay double taxes unless that company has a business established here.
Spouse visa is like a “blanket” visa, allows you to do whatever you want job wise.
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Spousal visa trumps the work visa in this case. Don’t make things more difficult than they need to be.
To begin, if you can even get an American company to hire you overseas, hats off to you. There are often strict laws and even if you’re hired, you may have to take on an independent contractor role void of health insurance and what not because American insurance won’t apply to you.Secondly, anything in IT/Engineering, etc. outside of Game Development usually pays higher in the U.S. and even if you do get a job here, your company most likely won’t give you a U.S. salary (and may even want to pay you in Japanese Yen). If the company doesn’t have operations in Japan already, you’re probably shit out of luck unless you’re the guinea pig and willing to work with them on establishing operations here (and the company would have to pay for a business license, etc. moving forward). Regarding taxes, yes, the U.S. and Japan have a double taxation treaty, but as people have mentioned on this thread, you’d have to pay U.S. + Japan taxes on anything over $122k. If you work in Japan and earn money overseas (very difficult to find something like this unless you work for yourself or your company is fucking awesome), you will be tax-exempt for up to 5 years within Japan. However, if you bring money into Japan, these are called foreign remittances (even including a bank transfer to a Japanese bank!) and you would be taxed on them. Upon gaining permanent residency, you will be required to file both Japanese and American tax returns (claim your exemptions here).Third, the cost of living in Japan is actually higher than most places in the U.S. (barring major cities such as New York, Seattle, LA, etc.) and many people don’t realize this. If you don’t believe me, check out contract fees/key money/guarantor fees/agency fees or the fact that Japan actually taxes you more than California and New York (especially if you live in Tokyo, which has the highest prefectural tax). Before the recent surge in oil prices, a flight in the U.S. covering the same distance as a shinkansen ticket would have been 50-70% of the price. Even more recently, plane tickets to the U.S. to visit family are outrageous and slated to go up to ¥300,000/person in August. The only things typically more expensive in America throughout are home prices, university education, and medical insurance. If you’re done with school and work for an employer that gives you medical insurance, then you can see the obvious reasons why Japan is overall more expensive (and you’d be receiving a higher salary in America).Fourth, make sure you can deal with the humidity, fact that it rains in Japan more than 2x the U.S. average annually in most places, and Japan has a much higher density of population across most cities. Not to mention the typhoons, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, oh, and the fact that the ex prime minister was assassinated within the last week.
I’m in a similar situation as yourself and the same age, but I live in Japan with my Japanese spouse already. Both of us have master’s degrees in the STEM field and have just found that there is so much more opportunity in the U.S.
I highly recommend reconsidering as Japan is super strict and many of the politicians are for even higher taxes than already exist. Consumption tax was raised in 2019 from 8% to 10% and the highest income tax on the spectrum is 45% as of 2022. Just let that soak in. Sure, you’ve got federal + state income tax in the U.S., but you actually have the option of moving somewhere with less or even no state income tax in some situations!
Here’s more information on taxes and how you’d classify living here as a spouse (a non-permanent resident for the first five years):
[https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2206.html](https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2206.html)%5Bhttps://taxsummaries.pwc.com/japan/individual/taxes-on-personal-income%5D(https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/japan/individual/taxes-on-personal-income)
[https://blog.gaijinpot.com/calculate-your-tax-bill-in-japan/](https://blog.gaijinpot.com/calculate-your-tax-bill-in-japan/)
Also, check this out… America’s GDP is 4.12x Japan’s, has 2.66x as many people, and generates 3.3x tax revenue as Japan (links from 2020-2022):
[https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/countries-by-gdp](https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/countries-by-gdp)
[https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries](https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries)
According to this website, America generates more tax revenue per person and yet, each person actually pays less in taxes lol:
[https://countryeconomy.com/taxes/tax-revenue](https://countryeconomy.com/taxes/tax-revenue)
Additionally, according to the tax foundation, the average American only paid 13.3% in Federal Taxes in 2019:
[https://taxfoundation.org/publications/latest-federal-income-tax-data/](https://taxfoundation.org/publications/latest-federal-income-tax-data/)
As you can see, the average American only paid $10,649 in taxes in 2019, which is less than Japan’s tax revenue AND somehow America generated almost $6k/person more.
This shows that the average take-home pay of a worker in Japan is 77.7% of their wages (which, with a lower salary and being similar to U.S. take-home isn’t preferable IMO):
[https://www.oecd.org/tax/taxing-wages-japan.pdf](https://www.oecd.org/tax/taxing-wages-japan.pdf)
Lastly, here’s a side-by-side comparison of the U.S. and Japan:
[https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/japan/usa?sc=XEAA](https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/japan/usa?sc=XEAA)
[https://livingcost.org/cost/japan/united-states](https://livingcost.org/cost/japan/united-states)
The average salary in the U.S. is shown in the above as 65.8% higher than Japan, while the cost of living for a family is only ~52.3% more. And although the cost of rent for one person in America is typically 137% higher, you have to factor in that living quarters are usually 2-6x larger in America and this website doesn’t factor in contract fees/key money/guarantor fees/agency fees for Japanese apartments, which can cost up to ¥500,000-600,000 just to move in and often require a renewal of the contract every two years, which may not come with appliances, air conditioning units, or even light bulbs sometimes.
I hope my crazy analysis helps you learn something! Here’s my background in case you’re wondering:
27 M
B.S. Computer Engineering, Minors in Japanese & Computer Science
M.S. in Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence)
Self-employed
Worked in big tech before moving to Japan