As far as I can tell, generation-skipping trusts established in the US wouldn’t have a point since they’d still get taxed normally as inheritance to your kids here. The Japanese progressive tax rate on inheritance also makes it brutal if you have any substantial amount of wealth. If you’ve settled into Japan, did you just start buying up Japanese real estate to take advantage of the lower tax-valuation of real estate? ..Which seems to be the best optimization available here.
Anyone make the decision to move back to the us and start their family there solely based on this tax law?
I understand that the tax law in Japan is obviously more fair. But say you have created substantial wealth… you certainly would not opt in to getting taxed 55% if you could instead get taxed 0.
5 comments
> Americans who have built up wealth and moved to Japan
Assuming things happened in that order then the smart thing to do would be to set up the trusts etc *before* moving to Japan.
Apart from that, the inheritance tax system here is good and is one reason Japanese society doesn’t have the huge wealth disparity that the US does. If anything, the rates on large estates in Japan should be even higher. Much higher. Should scale upwards until it hits 90% or so for anything over 100å„„.
What an odd thing to worry about. Did you inherit a massive fuckton of money and now worried about losing some?
/r/JapanFinance will likely give you better answers than here.
> I understand that the tax law in Japan is obviously more fair.
Any tax that forces the sale of family businesses or modest family homes that happen to be outside of Japan is most definitely unfair.
Any tax that applies to assets earned during a lifetime outside of Japan simply because someone lived in Japan for a year is most definitely unfair.
Any tax that forces someone to put their assets into a single asset class simply because that is the only way to keep the bill reasonable is most definitely unfair.
**> what are you planning to do about inheritance tax?**
Idk, fucking die