I am earning a small amount of money from my Apple App Store developer account (a steady £300 a year from selling iPhone apps). It’s currently paying into my UK bank account, but in June, I’ll be moving to Japan as a software engineer and will become tax resident there instead.
The UK has a [£1,000 annual personal trading allowance](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/tax-free-allowances-on-property-and-trading-income), so it’s not at the threshold where it’d need to be declared to the UK tax authority. However, I worry about whether it would complicate things in Japan due to it being a source of income, particularly as it’s from overseas.
My options are:
1. **Keep things as-is** (though, as stated, I worry about the consequences);
2. **Close the account to simplify things** (I’d prefer to avoid this, as the apps are effectively my portfolio);
3. **Make all my apps free to cut off the income stream** (I’d prefer to avoid this, as it attracts poor review scores from entitled users and also increases my server-side costs);
4. **Reconfigure the account pay into my Japanese bank account instead** (however, again, I don’t know the consequences – is it at the threshold where I’d need to declare it to the Japanese tax authority?).
What do you recommend I do?
2 comments
Go with 1) .. Japan has a threshold of 200k¥ for hobby income soo that would fall under that soo nothing to report.
This is probably a better question for r/Japanfinance.
It’s worth noting that as long as you’re not actively working on those apps then the income is not derived from a domestic source. You’d only need to worry about it if you brought the money (or part of it) into Japan (until you hit the 5 year threshold).
If it was me, the amount is so low I’d probably leave it where it was. It’s almost not worth the hassle.