Japan 🇯🇵 and Taiwan 🇹🇼 personal finance tips, Japanese Permanent Residency documents

Things have been pretty hectic with my travel schedule recently! I’ve been all over Oceania, with brief stops back in Japan 🇯🇵. Here’s a collection of the interesting personal finance tips and tech opportunities I came across recently.

Table of Contents

• Tech Opportunities in Japan

• Free US - Taiwan transfers 💵

• Wise Dynamic charges for Conversions 💹

• American Express upgrade offers in Japan 💳

• Getting tax and pension payment documents electron …

  • Tax payments

  • Pension Payments

• Conclusions

Tech Opportunities in Japan

These are some of the interesting tech job opportunities in Japan I found recently. If you’re a company and looking to advertise available positions, please reach out!

Woodstock is Japan's first social investing app. They allow Japanese residents to invest in the US market. They have a few engineering and product positions available. They have a hybrid work culture, and they can sponsor work visas.

MoneyForward is looking for a Senior Product Manager for their Cloud ERP team, collaborating across product, engineering, sales, and marketing teams. Japanese proficiency is not required.

Bodygram revolutionizes body measurement tech using only smartphones. They’re looking for a Frontend Engineer (React). Partially remote, Japan residency required. Check out the details and other positions here.

Kraken is a smart energy provider. They are hiring a Senior Data Engineer for their KrakenFlex platform. Partially remote, Japan residency required. See details and other positions here.

Kodu.ai is an AI no-code product development platform. They are looking for two founding engineers with experience in Typescript, NextJS, and automation tools. Remote-first, Tokyo/Seoul time zone. If interested, email [email protected].

Stability.ai is an AI company well known for generative media. They are looking for a Senior Data Engineer for their Tokyo office. The company has a hybrid work model .

Free US - Taiwan transfers 💵

I recently learned of a new option for free transfers to/from Taiwan with CTBC Bank (Chinatrust Commercial Bank or 中國信託銀行). Previously, I was only aware of HSBC (滙豐銀行) as an option for free transfers without reaching some high status level at a Taiwanese bank. The benefits to this setup beyond waived fees are usually less documentation requirements and quicker processing speeds for transfers within a bank network.

More details are at the CTBC website for their US Branch, but an outgoing transfer from the US to any other CTBC branch, or an incoming transfer from another CTBC branch to the US will have no fees charged from the US side. You still need to do the transfer in a non-TWD currency as TWD is a controlled currency. It’s hard to confirm details for CTBC branches in other countries online, but there may be similar programs to waive fees within the CTBC network.

According the CTBC website, accounts are available exclusively to residents of California, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Nevada, Washington and Arizona.

I’ve added a column indicating whether a bank has overseas branches with free transfers in my open database of Taiwanese banks.

There may potentially be other plays with other banks that have foreign branches to send/receive money for free, ideally also with less verification and faster processing times. If you learn of any, please let me know!

Wise Dynamic charges for Conversions 💹

Wise is a commonly used service to send money between countries, but here’s a note of caution. It seems like during periods of large fluctuations in the exchange rate, Wise will add dynamic charges to conversions, as seen during recent yen strength fluctuations. Here’s their help page on these charges. The stated reason is to protect Wise in case of currency fluctuations the other way if there are big movements while money is being transferred in under the guaranteed rate. However, I think that Wise could handle this better without these dynamic charges by informing users of a large change and telling them the previously quoted rate cannot be fulfilled, and asking if they want to still convert at the current rate. Currently the yen has stabilized and dynamic charges are not being applied, but this is something to be aware of when the yen or other currencies are making big moves, such as the BOJ or US Federal Reserve making rate change announcements.

American Express upgrade offers in Japan 💳

American Express has been known to give offers to upgrade to more premium cards when holding a less premium version of a credit card, usually associated with a bonus for spending a certain amount of money after upgrading. This applies to their worldwide line of credit cards as well, including Japan.

I got this offer to upgrade my Japanese American Express ANA Gold Card to the ANA Premium Card, for essentially 58,000 bonus points + the 5,000 points that come from spending the required 500,000 yen in 3 months. The original annual fee on the ANA Gold Card is 34,100 yen whereas the annual fee of the ANA Premium Card is an eye watering 165,000 yen! So that difference in fee is 130,900 yen, though American Express did not charge me this right away, instead they refunded the pro-rated annual fee from the Gold Card, with the new annual fee not yet charged to me. The regular signup bonus is given in tiers, with a maximum of 105,000 ANA miles + 35,000 miles from the spend if you can spend 3,500,000 yen in 3 months which to most people I assume is a lot for personal spending. Major benefits of the ANA Premium Card (full list of benefits, and here's a good writeup):

• 4.5x miles on ANA flights instead of 2x from the Gold.

• Premium Service Desk - this seems similar to the normal American Express concierge service.

• 4 free family cards with the same benefits.

• Free night at a high end hotel, can be used with your normal hotel loyalty program, 5000 yen coupon for hotel services if staying a second night

• Access to KIWAMI50, which promises increased access to high end restaurants (review). The 20% cashback on Pocket Concierge unfortunately does not seem to be active anymore.

• Unlimited Priority Pass for airport lounge access including 1 guest, family cards get this as well. Not useful to me as I get this from US cards already.

• Business check in counter and access to ANA domestic lounges (I'm already ANA Platinum so not useful to me.)

• Free luggage delivery of up to 2 suitcases / golf bags (no boxes) to and from the airport! My old card only included 1 piece, and only from the airport.

• Prince Hotels Platinum status for free breakfast, late checkout, and a welcome gift

• Smartphone protection (I get this from US cards, not useful to me, also already a benefit of the Gold card)

• Some other minor benefits (Ikyu.com coupons, a travel lounge in Kyoto, premium golf access, rental car discounts).

There's also some ongoing spend promotion for new and existing card members, if you hit the required spend of 500,000 yen from the upgrade offer there’s an additional 25,000 miles bonus. The promotions combined mean I’m getting 58,000 + 25,000 = 83,000 miles for an additional 130,900 yen (1.58 yen/mile without the bonus spend, or 1.1 US cents/mile) which seems decent especially with the bonus spend promotion, although they haven’t even charged me the new annual fee yet! My thinking is if I can use the free night well, exploit the hotel status, and actually get into top restaurants with KIWAMI50, there’s value in this offer. Also, there may be a chance to downgrade later and recoup at least some of the annual fee without having the points clawed back.

I actually have the ANA Super Flyers version of the card as I hit Platinum status with ANA in 2022 and converted my regular ANA Gold card to the Super Flyers version. This has the amazing benefit of keeping ANA Platinum and Star Alliance Gold as long as I hold the card, with no other requirement for keeping status, and apparently this also extends to any family members you add as additional cardholders! You can read an in-depth article about the Super Flyers card and how to obtain it.

Before this offer came around, I was trying to change to the cheaper JCB/Visa/Mastercard card with a 16,500 yen annual fee instead, but was rejected, potentially because I’m self employed at the moment.

In summary, look out for interesting upgrade offers from American Express credit cards!

Getting tax and pension payment documents electronically for Japanese Permanent Residency 🇯🇵

I had an article published recently on TokyoDev about getting permanent residency in Japan. One requirement for the application is proving you are up to date on your tax and pension payments. Here’s a detailed walkthrough about getting these documents online to save time instead of going in person to government offices.

The requirements can be found at this page. The link is to category 1 for permanent resident applicants, but the same requirement applies to all the categories (page listing each category of applicant), with the difference being how many years back are required for proof.

Tax payments

For tax payments (national income as well as regional taxes), the requirement is under 直近の申請人及び申請人を扶養する方の所得及び納税状況を証明する資料 (Documents certifying the most recent income and tax payment status of the applicant and his or her dependents).

You can obtain this proof at the your local national tax office (税務署), and to save time you can actually request this online at Japan’s online tax system e-Tax! See my guide for getting e-Tax working.

Here’s a step by step guide:

1. At the main e-Tax screen, click 新規作成 to file a new procedure.

2. Click 納税証明書の交付請求 to request a tax certificate.

3. For 交付方法の選択 (format of the certifcate), select 1. 納税証明書を書面で受け取る (paper certificate)

4. You can choose whether to get the certificate by mail (1. 納秘証明書を郵送で受け取る) or picked up at the tax office (2. 納税証明書を窓口で受け取る)

5. If you choose pickup at the tax office, it will ask you if you have a digital certificate (generally your My Number card) (1.電子証明書を持っていない / 2. 電子証明書を持っている)

6. It will ask you who is requesting the certificate, either yourself (1), an individual representative (2), or a company acting as a representative (3).

7. It will ask what tax office to send the request to. By default this should be set to your registered ward / prefecture’s tax office, but make sure this is set correctly. Since I logged into eTax with an id / password, it is asking me for My Number.

8. It asks again how you’d like to receive the certificate, either picking up at the tax office, by regular mail, or by registered mail.

Pension Payments

For pension and public health insurance premiums, the requirement is found on the same page under 申請人及び申請人を扶養する方の公的年金及び公的医療保険の保険料の納付状況を証明する資料 (Documents verifying the payment status of public pension and public health insurance premiums for the applicant and his/her dependents). Proof of health insurance premiums are generally with paper documents and won’t be covered in this article. For pension payments, technically you could prove this through paper documents, but this is not a regular flow and can take some amount of tie. The yearly pension statements sent by mail do NOT provide enough information for the application.

It’s much easier instead to use the online pension portal Nenkin Net to obtain these records. To use Nenkin Net, it is easiest to login using a My Number card or a previously registered digital certificate. Otherwise, you can register to receive an ID via mail.

What the immigration office is looking for is the printed 各月の年金記録 (kaku tsuki no nenkin kiroku, or pension payment records for each month). Although the actual requirement is only for a limited amount of years, it is preferred to include all years on record.

You can see the official guide on how to find this information. From the top page, select 年金記録を確認する (nenkin kiroku wo kakunin suru, confirm pension payments)

From the subscreen to confirm records, click 月別の年金記録を確認する (tsukibetsu no nenkin kiroku o kakunin suru, confirm monthly pension payments)

You’ll get a screen with your monthly pension records. By default this is for all time since the age of 20. If not, there should be functionality to adjust the time period to all. Don’t worry about red records for periods you were not in Japan. However, if there are red records during the required period of being up to date on your pension payments, this will likely be a problem for your applicaiton!

There should be buttons to print the records, one through your computer print dialog, and the other is by mail 郵送用 (yūsō-yō).

You should get a screen that looks like the following. Ideally print the document to PDF for later records!

Conclusions

Hopefully these Japan and Taiwan updates were useful! I plan to spend more time in Taiwan starting from October and hopefully will learn some new useful tips about settling in there. You can always reach out at [email protected] for comments or questions! Remember, you can also support this publication by becoming a paid subscriber or a Patreon!