Tax Refund Japan

Question: How to get refund of deducted income tax in Japan?

I would like to get the money back that was deducted from my pay for income tax in Japan so that I’m not double-taxed when paying my home country’s income tax.

How can I do this?

Thanks.

(I’m not a JET Programme participant with any special tax status.)

Answer: Okay, this is becoming silly, but I am going to try and play nice. If you ask the question for a third time though you are going to find yourself running with the big dogs. That’s the extent of my sarcasm, which I feel is justified, for this post.

Very simply put, you can’t get the money back you paid in Japanese taxes because that is the law. The Japanese government, like most if not all governments, tax you. Say good bye to that money. It now belongs to the Japanese government and you are not going to see it again.

Now, as far as your home country taxes go, I can only speak to what is the case if you are American. If so, you get about a $90K exemption on everything you earn in Japan if you qualify as a resident. You have to live here in Japan for a year to qualify. You can do that in three ways. You have to file the 2555-EZ form to do this. You can qualify as a bona fide resident if you lived here for an entire tax year. At last in the past, if you could claim in good faith that although you had not lived here for an entire year YET, but were going to do so, they would allow you to postpone your filing until you had lived here an entire year. Or something close to that. The second way to get the exemption is by the Physical Presence test. The 2009 form will ask you if you have been physically present in a foreign country for at least 330 days during the tax season in question. The next is the Tax Home test. Was your tax home in a foreign country throughout your period of bona fide residence or physical presence. I know, it seems redundant, but I am just copying this off my tax form. Don’t blame me and I really can’t explain much more than that.

What is all comes down to is…….

1- You can’t get any taxes you paid back.
2- You can get a $90K or so exemption on wages you earned in Japan if you qualify for such.
3- You can do a search and get the 2555-EZ Foreign Earned Income Exclusion and figure it out.
4- If you do #3 right, this will prevent you from having to pay any U.S. taxes on your income in Japan, unless you made more than $90K, in which case a lot of people are going to want to know how you made that much as an English teacher, me included.
5- If you don’t live in the U.S., then I just spent quite a bit of time giving you accurate information that is of no use whatsoever. Please tell me that ain’t so.

If you do live in the U.S. and you need more help, just contact me by email. At least in the past, the IRS has been very forgiving regarding citizens who hadn’t been filing returns, but got on the ball and caught up. I sat for a couple of hours with this one guy in the Osaka Pig and Whistle bar and helped him fill out about 5 years of late returns. Even contacted the IRS prior to doing so and they said as long as he filed the back returns, and didn’t owe any taxes on any the returns, they would just say bygones.

Please tell me you live in the U.S. and I haven’t wasted my time. No, wait, even if you don’t live there, this may have proven useful to other readers who are U.S. citizens, so maybe all isn’t lost.

See? Once again, no sarcasm. Okay, I started out with a bit, but only a minor dash for me.r

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