At the end of March, I’ll be leaving Japan and heading back to the United States with my family in tow. My wife and I have somewhere around $60k in cash, which we don’t want to carry as physical money through customs. About half of this is in dollars, if that makes any difference.
I do not have a bank account in the US. My understanding is that I can’t easily create an account there without being physically present. Thus, we currently have nowhere to send anything through bank transfers.
– Could we transfer our money to my father’s US bank account, for him to return to us after we arrive?
– Is there an international bank in Japan where we could deposit all of our money and easily withdraw it (and close the account) after arriving in the US?
– Could we leave our Japanese accounts open for a few days beyond our departure, create a US account immediately after arrival, do a Wise transfer online, then close the accounts remotely?
The first option seems preferable, but only if the IRS wouldn’t hassle us. If anyone here has any insight on any of these, I’d be very grateful to receive it.
Bonus question: My wife wants to keep an account open here in order to make nenkin payments. Someone at her bank told her she could change the address on her account to her mother’s address, but I would prefer it if she didn’t do this for complicated reasons related to taxes. If anyone knows anything about setting up payments by proxy instead, I’d be all ears.
Thank you!
4 comments
Is your wife Japanese?
You could do the first option but you will need to check what is the maximum transfer amount before being investigated by tax regulators. And to transfer without a bank account you could try a remittance service, they usually accept cash.
For the third option why don’t you just open a Wise bank account? When you arrive in the US and open a bank account you can then transfer it from Wise to your US account.
Wise has a transfer limit.
An alternative to using your father’s bank account, Use your father’s address to open an online bank account in US, for ex: Capital One. Do a wire transfer from your Japanese bank account to your new account in US.