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Chaddicus@wombatpandaa Today is the deadline in Japan ^^;;
@lina still, I'd rather be done with it already đ
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I'm curious, are tax returns in Japan similar to the US? Like they already know but you have to verify anyway or they'll bonk you? Or is it a different sort of thing?
@wombatpandaa Nah it's self reported. If you are just a salaried employee you don't have to file anything. It's only if you have extra income, and then for the most part they just trust whatever you say unless they have reason to audit you.
@wombatpandaa The most annoying part for me is going through all my expenses to add up what needs to be deducted as a business expense and what doesn't (because I'm too lazy to use a separate card/account... ^^;;).
That, and holding currency in non JPY is a pain. I had to play weird spreadsheet games with an export of my PayPal / Kofi income (which is a USD account) to make sure it was all done "by the book", took a while to even confirm the correct algorithm.
I think many people don't bother though, a lot of it is on the honor system. If you did your best and aren't cheating on purpose you're usually OK. The extra work I did for the USD thing ended up being a tiny difference on the total in the end.
@lina ahh that's interesting and does kind of make sense in a way. I can see why a person would want to separate their accounts between work and regular stuff, but I imagine for you gals that'd be tough because (I assume) it's kind of intertwined in some areas.
@wombatpandaa Yeah it's mostly, splitting Amazon accounts and all that is a pain. We should try honestly, but we need to come up with some kind of system that we stick to. If we don't then you end up having to audit the totals again.
The joys of being self employed ^^;;
But then again, the whole thing took about a day of work total, which isn't the worst. It helps that you don't need to fear you're going to get hit with a huge fine for a small mistake and all that (besides, they go both ways, so you bet if the tax office decided to try to go after me I'd go over my past returns and fix everything I messed up in their favor within the corrections deadline... in the end nobody wins unless you're actually trying to cheat)
@wombatpandaa Technically if I did more rigurous accounting I could get a tax break for that itself. So they do reward/incentivize people who take it more seriously (double entry bookkeeping, using proper software, etc.). But it's not required.
@lina wow, it's so interesting getting a brief look into how a more sensible taxation system works! I've long been a proponent of using natural incentives, especially positive ones, to encourage behavior rather than outright legislating it and it feels like the Japanese taxation system tried to do that somewhat. Though it's funny to hear that about self-employment! My parents are also self employed and I think they share your pain. Do same sex married couples receive tax benefits in Japan?
@wombatpandaa Japan doesn't recognize same sex marriages at the national level (yet), though there are ongoing changes and exceptions and legal rulings on this issue, so depending on what you're trying to do and the specifics there are various workarounds for some of it.
Worth mentioning that Japan doesn't have "joint filing" for married couples, so we're mostly talking about spouse deductions and things like that, you're still filing separately either way. To give an example of the complexity, I believe that a dependent non-legally-recognized same sex spouse can be registered as part of the same "household" for resident registration purposes (this implies shared living expenses), and then the head of household could claim the dependent's medical expenses on their tax return.
Edit: Also, since the existing LGBT partnership systems are at the prefectural/local level, I suspect tax benefits might apply for municipal taxes?
So basically "it's complicated, talking to a lawyer/accountant recommended" ^^;;
@lina wow, that sounds complicated! Definitely worth a professional if one were to be in such a position. Well, thank you for indulging my curiosity! You've been very kind. Btw, I keep seeing y'all streams and wanting to hop on! I've just been too busy as of late. But I'll try sometime soon to tune into one, because you two seem fun. ^^