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Tell us where you are moving, when you are leaving and the basic facts of your Japanese departure.
A move is more than a flight. Get organised around your departure, the ties you retain and the evidence you need. Start with a free plan; choose paid preparation or review when you’re ready.
A personal checklist, country-guide comparisons and a place to organise your next steps.
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Exit Global can help evaluate practical residency pathways in Dubai, Malta, Cyprus and UK and beyond. Some routes can be completed relatively quickly depending on your circumstances. Each destination has its own site — click through.
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Immigration eligibility, processing times and government requirements vary by route and applicant.
Traditional full-service departure engagements get expensive when tax accountants, lawyers and valuers each bill hourly for gathering the same facts. Software handles the organisation and drafting; experts handle the parts that require judgment.
The one-page version of this site: the rules, the two-sided checklist and the filing steps for Japan. No email required.
Answer the intake questions, send us what you have, and we compile it into a structured report: what you have, what is missing, and the order the NTA will expect it in.
A member of our team reads your compiled report and writes an opinion memo: what to change, what the NTA will push back on, and the questions to settle before you sever ties.
Tell us where you are moving, when you are leaving and the basic facts of your Japanese departure.
Add evidence of your new life abroad and the Japanese ties you have changed, ended or retained.
Work through structured questions covering housing, family, work, banking, pension, financial assets, visa status and the other facts that decide whether your 'base of life' has left Japan.
The software organises your answers and evidence into a structured departure file: your resident / non-resident position, your exit-tax (国外転出時課税) exposure against the ¥100 million threshold, your tax-agent and filing deadlines, and your inhabitant-tax position.
Our team reviews the file and evidence, provides a written evaluation of your residency position and flags what to fix before you file.
You receive the prepared file and review. You decide whether to file on that basis, make an advance written inquiry to the NTA, or obtain specialist advice first.
The checklist is free, the compiled report is $27 and the review memo is $497 — all fixed. Complex tax, valuation or specialist work is scoped and quoted separately, only if your situation requires it.
Documents are stored privately when you explicitly save them. We use restricted access and do not sell or share your information.
Japan has no residency-opinion request and no single 'departure form' at the tax office. Residency turns on whether you still have a domicile (住所) — the base of your life — in Japan. What you do file, and when, depends on whether you appoint a tax agent before you leave. Getting those two things right is most of the job.
You are a Japanese resident if you have a domicile (住所) in Japan or have had a residence (居所) here continuously for one year or more. Domicile means the base of your life, judged on objective facts — where you live, your occupation, where your assets are, your family and your nationality. The NTA says plainly that this is not decided by day-counting alone: spending more than half the year abroad does not make you a non-resident if your base of life is still in Japan.
For someone leaving to work abroad, the presumption runs the other way: a job that will keep you abroad for one year or more is presumed to end your domicile from the day you leave.
NTA Tax Answer No.2012: resident, non-permanent resident and non-resident ↗If you will still have Japanese filing or payment obligations after you leave, you must appoint a tax agent (納税管理人) using the Notification of Tax Agent for Income Tax and Consumption Tax. File it before you leave and your final return keeps the normal deadline of March 15 of the following year. Do not file it and you must lodge a pre-departure return (準確定申告) and pay everything — including any estimated tax instalments due after you leave — before your departure date.
The same choice moves your exit-tax valuation date and deadline (see below). It is the single most consequential form in a Japanese departure.
NTA Tax Answer No.1923: overseas work and appointing a tax agent ↗The NTA does not issue residency determinations on request. The closest instrument is the advance written inquiry procedure (事前照会に対する文書回答手続): you describe a specific, real transaction in writing before its filing deadline, consent to anonymised publication, and the regional bureau answers in writing — the target is around three months. It is used far more for transactions than for personal residency, and it is not a binding ruling in the way an Australian private ruling is. For most leavers the practical protection is a well-evidenced file.
NTA: advance written inquiry procedure ↗Your final income-tax return covers January 1 to your departure date as a resident; after that, only Japanese-source income is taxed, mostly by withholding. Employees are settled through year-end adjustment by the employer on the last salary before departure. Individual inhabitant tax (住民税) works differently: it is assessed on the prior year's income according to where you lived on January 1. Leaving on January 2 or later does not cancel that year's bill — you either pay it in full before you go or appoint an inhabitant-tax agent to pay it for you.
MIC: individual inhabitant tax and leaving Japan ↗Japanese income tax depends on residency. Residents (other than non-permanent residents) are taxed on worldwide income; non-residents are taxed only on Japanese-source income, largely by withholding at 20.42%. The NTA decides which you are by asking where the base of your life is — not by counting days, and not by reading your moving-out notification.
Read the NTA's residency definitions ↗Whether you sold, let out or kept your Japanese home available — and whether your municipal registration has moved — is the heaviest fact in the domicile question.
A spouse or children who stay behind in Japan is one of the objective facts the NTA lists for domicile. It needs an explanation, not silence.
Your occupation, the expected length of your posting or move, your assets, your bank accounts, your pension enrolment and your nationality are the other facts the NTA names.
You don't need everything on day one. Start with what you know and keep track of the gaps.
Choose your destination and record the key facts, dates and Japanese ties.
Keep new-country evidence and changes to Japanese ties in separate, labelled sections.
Our team reviews your residency file and evidence, provides an advisory opinion and recommends revisions before you file or approach the NTA.
You should not have to start from a blank page, or pay a professional to chase every document. Build the file yourself; have it reviewed before you rely on it.
Our team reviews your resident / non-resident position, your exit-tax exposure, your supporting documents and departure narrative, provides an advisory opinion and recommends revisions.
A human review of the facts and evidence, not just a completed checklist.
You gather documents and answer the guided questions. We focus professional time on reviewing your prepared file rather than assembling it from scratch.
Designed to cost less than having a firm manage every preparation task.
Have a company, private-company shares, unlisted securities, stock options, derivatives or a rental property? We can connect you with licensed tax accountants and valuers for the pieces that need them.
The right specialist for the work your situation actually requires.
Complex, full-service Japanese departures can run into tens of thousands of dollars in combined tax-accounting, legal and valuation fees once the ¥100 million exit tax, a deferral with security, a private company and a rental property are in play.
This refers to broader, multi-specialist engagements, not residency preparation alone. Most leavers are below the exit-tax threshold. Actual fees and savings vary.
Since 1 July 2015, a person who leaves Japan holding ¥100 million or more of financial assets — securities, investment-trust units, silent-partnership interests, unsettled margin and derivative positions — and who has had a domicile or residence in Japan for more than five of the last ten years is treated as having sold those assets at market value on departure (国外転出時課税). Years spent on a Table 1 work or study visa do not count towards the five. Appoint a tax agent before you leave and the assets are valued on your departure date and taxed in the normal March 15 return; skip it and you must file before you leave, using the value three months before your planned departure. With a tax agent, a return and security equal to the tax, payment can be deferred five years, extendable to ten, with interest tax running. Return within the deferral period still holding the assets and the tax can be cancelled; sell for less and it can be recomputed. Each of these is a decision, and each needs a number behind it.
NTA Tax Answer No.1478: special rule on capital gains when leaving Japan ↗A licensed tax accountant (税理士) can act as your tax agent, model the exit-tax computation and deferral, prepare the pre-departure or March 15 return and handle the inhabitant-tax settlement with your municipality.
A certified public accountant (公認会計士) or qualified valuer can support the market value of unlisted shares, partnership interests and derivative positions on the valuation date the exit tax fixes for you.
Prepare it yourself. Get it reviewed. Bring in specialists when needed.
Start my guided departure →Team review is a separate, agreed professional engagement. Our advisory opinion is not a determination by the NTA.
These are suggested evidence categories, not a universal NTA document requirement. Include what's relevant to your situation.
Your file grows as your move does.
There is no single departure form — but there are four things the NTA and your municipality expect you to do, and their deadlines depend on whether you appoint a tax agent. This app does not connect to e-Tax.
Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau: procedures before leaving Japan ↗Submit the Notification of Tax Agent for Income Tax and Consumption Tax (所得税・消費税の納税管理人の届出書) to the tax office for your address. It keeps your final return on the normal March 15 deadline and fixes your exit-tax valuation at the departure date.
Without a tax agent, lodge the pre-departure return (準確定申告) covering January 1 to your departure date, and pay it — plus any estimated-tax instalments (due 31 July and 30 November where the base amount is ¥150,000 or more) that fall after you leave — before your departure date.
If you meet the ¥100 million and five-in-ten tests, include the deemed disposal in that return with the prescribed asset schedules; to defer, attach the deferral election and provide security equal to the deferred tax and interest by the filing deadline.
Residency can be questioned years later, and the exit-tax deferral runs for five to ten years with an annual continuation filing by March 15. Keep the evidence, every notification and your entry/exit records.
You can organise your evidence before deciding how far to take it.
Yes. Under an agreed review engagement, our team reviews your residency file and supporting package, provides a written advisory opinion and recommends revisions. That is our opinion — not an NTA determination and not a written answer from the tax office.
No. Japan has no residency-opinion request. You self-assess whether your domicile has left Japan, and the forms that matter are the moving-out notification at your city office and the tax-agent notification at your tax office. The only formal route to a written view is the advance written inquiry procedure, which is designed for specific transactions and is rarely used for personal residency. NTA: advance written inquiry ↗
Yes, but only above a high threshold. If you hold ¥100 million or more of securities, investment-trust units, silent-partnership interests and unsettled margin or derivative positions, and you have lived in Japan for more than five of the last ten years (time on a Table 1 visa such as a work or study status does not count), you are deemed to have sold them at market value when you leave. Real estate, cash and crypto held directly are not covered assets. NTA Tax Answer No.1478 ↗
Yes. Appoint a tax agent before you leave, file the return by March 15 with the deferral election and asset schedules, and provide security equal to the deferred tax and interest. Payment is then deferred for five years from departure, extendable to ten by a notice filed by March 15; interest tax accrues during the deferral. If you return within the period still holding the assets, the tax can be cancelled by an amended return within four months of returning; if you sell for less, the tax can be recomputed on the lower price. NTA: exit-tax system ↗
Not filing the tax-agent notification. Without it, your final return and all tax — including estimated-tax instalments due after departure — must be filed and paid before you board, and if you are in the exit-tax net your assets are valued three months before your planned departure rather than on the day you leave. The second trap is inhabitant tax: it is charged on the previous year's income by where you lived on January 1, so leaving in February still leaves a full year's bill to settle. Tokyo RTB leaflet ↗
No blanket rule requires it. Accounts and assets in Japan are among the objective facts the NTA weighs for domicile, alongside your home, occupation, family and nationality. Keep what you need, tell the institution you are a non-resident so withholding is correct, and be able to explain it. Rental income from Japanese property stays taxable in Japan and is a common reason you need a tax agent.
Compulsory National Pension and National Health Insurance coverage end when you file the moving-out notification. Japanese nationals aged 20 to under 65 can keep contributing to the National Pension by voluntary enrolment through their last pension office in Japan. Foreign nationals with six months or more of contributions who have not reached the ten-year pension qualifying period can claim the lump-sum withdrawal payment within two years of losing coverage, with a maximum of 60 months counted. Japan Pension Service: moving abroad ↗
Not for ten years. A Japanese national who had a domicile in Japan at any time within the ten years before a death or gift remains subject to Japanese inheritance and gift tax on worldwide assets, whether as the person giving or the person receiving. Non-Japanese nationals who leave are generally taxed only on Japan-situs assets, subject to the same look-back rules. Plan gifts and estates around this tail, not just around income tax. NTA Tax Answer No.4138 ↗
Dubai (UAE) / Malta / Cyprus / UK (non-dom / FIG) / Panama / Paraguay
Each site covers one departure, in that country's own rules. The destination sites cover where you're going. All reviewed by the same team at Exit Global.
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