Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

Do you want to continue operating a business? If so, then you probably want accountants to handle the paperwork / filings part of running the business for you. You should expect to pay about ~$10k a year for this all in, including the service in English that (reading between the lines) you likely require.

If you cannot operate a business, then you can have accountants wind down the operations of the current business. This will not reflect particularly poorly on you, especially to the extent that the business was more a paper entity than something with material operations. (Failure at running a business is not exactly prized in Japan; infelicitous choices in paperwork can be taken care of.)

I would be happy to give you the name of an English-speaking accountancy in Tokyo that can help you with either of the above. Please feel free to send me an email; my address is in my profile.

You should probably speak to a mental health professional. I don't have a great recommendation for one here; consider asking your friends or, in extremis, your local city hall for a referral to an English-speaking one. If the health-oriented parts of city hall don't have a ready answer the internationalization-oriented part (hopefully) does; this is a Top 10 ask for them.

I'm curious why it costs so much to handle the paperwork/filings for a company that sounds like it's essentially dormant. Is that just normal in Japan?

Also is 50k the cost of incorporation or the capital required to incorporate in Japan? If so, if he/she dissolves the company can she get some of that back?

To the original poster, I wish you all the best, sincerely, you can get through this, and like others have said you can make back the 50k, try not to worry about that, that only pays for a couple of years of private school for a little kid where I live.

To your first question: this is simply the cost-of-doing-business here, driven (largely) by Japan's expectation that the company is the primary interface between a citizen and the government, and therefore the company bears responsibility for sending a licensed professional to the relevant offices approximately monthly bearing filings relevant to their employees, and this licensed professional has the opposite of economies of scale if they're taking in filings for 1 employee. (There's also a premium built into that price for service in English, which is something most accountancies in Japan can't offer in-house.)

It is not particularly expensive to incorporate a company in Japan and, while capital requirements were once in the $30k range, they're functionally $0 now. I will not speculate as to the original poster's financial circumstances.

As a point of contrast, my family’s 株式会社 spends about US$2,000 or less annually. This is without English support, though.

> 株式会社

To save other folks the trouble, Google Translate says this translates to: "Ltd.".

Google Translate is essentially correct, but Wikipedia has more details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabushiki_gaisha

It's more like a corporation, specifically one which issues shares.

Added: There is a separate classification which is virtually identical to U.S. LLCs (because it was modeled after them), called 合同会社.

It appears he formed a Co., Ltd. (Company Limited) which is a private/unlisted stock corporation.

A Kabushikigaisha is roughly equivalent to a C Corp in the US. You’ve probably seen the abbreviation K.K. after Japanese company names before.

I put in 50k because that is what is needed to get a business manager visa. Right now it is sitting in the company account. I'm sure I could get some of it back if I closed the company.

If the $50k is your paid up registered capital, you can loan out the money back to yourself as a loan to director or even another legal entity (such as a US or foreign corporation, LLC, LP, etc.). The $50k of registered capital (the investment to secure the visa) would remain on the balance sheet.

Perhaps you could remain in business and assist foreigners with setting up Japanese companies.

> Perhaps you could remain in business and assist foreigners with setting up Japanese companies.

Someone with an empty shell business, limited or no Japanese skill and no Japanese cofounder is precisely the last person I would ask advice to set up my company there.

I wrote a comment further down, but I wanted to say that I've gotten a lot of advice from business owners over the years. I have many family members, and my own great grandparents all the way down my generation were all business owners, including many, many relatives.

I've had multiple business coaches and personal advisors as well, and across the board, all of them would tell me that you need to have a full and complete plan before even starting out creating a business.

I did it by the seat of my pants and paid dearly through some near disasters. But I never had 50k invested up front. If you had a viable plan to make this work, you just need to work your plan. If you don't, you should seriously consider pulling out as much money as you can and take this experience as a solid life lesson.

Those that won't quit don't really talk like you are right now in your original posting. My sense is that you have skills, talent in other areas and were trying to get happiness through an area of life you don't excel at.

I hope you figure this all out, all the best to you.

Thanks for your advice and your experience. I have an accountant but he doesn't speak English. I feel anxious contacting him. Realising how much he is costing me (about 3200 USD a year) is one thing that set me off.

I read in some of your past posts about how your accountant needs to fit your business. I think I made a bad choice of accountants. He works very much on paper and can't understand why I'm not going to visit clients etc. I very much feel like we're talking at cross purposes.

I've been going to counseling and I found it very helpful. I started going when I couldn't handle my past job. They gave me the advice that maybe I was more suited to working for myself than working for a company. I usually feel very good after visiting them but it quickly wears off.

As others have mentioned, the paperwork can wait. Your accounting entries are immaterial at this point. Do you have an international health insurance plan that has mental health coverage such as Bupa or Cigna Global?

If you're feeling down and need someone to talk to, I can really recommend /r/KindVoice. You can be as anonymous as you want, it's just a community of people who want to help others when they need it the most. They also have a discord server, so it's a bit more of a direct interaction than through reddit.

But you wrote: I've got lots of forms and paperwork that I'm supposed to file but I don't really know what its for or how to fill it in.

How about this idea: maybe there are some action items there for this accountant?

Just want to point out that it doesn't necessarily cost this much ($10k) just for an accountant.

My accountant is ~$200/month + ~$1k for special end-of-year reporting/filing and ~$1k for beginning of year (~April in japan) reporting/filing. I spend none of my time thinking about anything other than the bank balance and we meet whenever to discuss what the business can/should be doing.

Unfortunately, I can't 100% verify that what my accountant does is the highest quality accounting there is, since I'm not an accountant, but I haven't gotten even a whiff of impropriety. No angry letters from the city office or anything either.

hey my company has 1 person (me) and i paid only 10,000 jpy per month for a visiting accountant.

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