JJapan

Japan eyes tougher rules for foreign residents and tax hike for tourists

  • June 5, 2025

Japan eyes tougher rules for foreign residents and tax hike for tourists

by fevredream

23 comments

  2. Don’t mention the much much higher amount of health insurance premiums not being paid by Japanese, easier to blame foreigners 

  3. Heard from some bloggers that Japan is going to cancel tax-free (change it to standard airport scheme) and introduce “tourists prices” in attraction sites. I was able to find the source of the first one, does anybody have thoughts on the second?

  4. Just hope they won’t put a tax on attractions solely based on your apparence or I take one of my two cards out of my deck: 在留ガート (the other one is the Gaijin card).

  5. I don’t mind if they raise the requirements for citizenship, but they really need to fix PR processing.

  6. Huh? I didn’t know there was a ‘departure tax’.

    Thanks for coming, now give me money and bugger off. Very omotenashi.

  7. So no more tax-free shopping and paying a bit more when leaving the country? Yeah, that honestly seems reasonable. Other currencies converted to yen are worth so much atm anyway.

  12. Living in Japan is like an eternal migraine ever since Covid ended. Jesus H Christ.

  13. The thing that jumped out the most to me was the discussion on health insurance. Paying upfront for lower wage workers or student immigrants would be an unfair burden, although as they say: first year you owe the minimum amount anyway.

    I’m really surprised enrollment is not automatic, but then again for those with a job pay through their workplace, so it’s complicated to force it.

    Also: 9 people, $2.4m in unpaid consomption tax, $24m in purchases. Wow! Where do they even resell all that? 10% off is not a huge discount for buying 2nd hand or products of dubious origin

  14. 2 foreigners at my company got Japanese citizenship instead of permanant residency because it’s easier to get citizenship. lol

  15. According to the article it’s easier to naturalize than get PR. I find that hard to believe, but if it’s true it’s nuts.

  16. “In fiscal 2022, there were nine individuals who purchased tax-free products, but didn’t have the goods with them when they left the country, meaning they failed to pay ¥340 million ($2.4 million) in consumption tax, according to the Board of Audit.”

    What the hell did they buy? What the hell?

  17. Only for tax I can understand them. For driving license I think the exams are not a problem. Especially practical exam is hard enough, maybe harder than even Japanese. Written exam is indeed a bit easy but it’s not related to driving on the opposite side or drink driving at all!
    When it comes to insurance, demanding a certain amount of insurance at the beginning is not applicable I think. It doesn’t make sense. Also of course income will be zero before coming to Japan, what else did they expect.
    Tourist prices are understandable for some museums etc but japanese resident foreigners shouldn’t be effected by it.
    I think living in Japan is hard enough for many foreigners already… If Japan makes it harder with current low salaries they will bankrupt soon imho…

  18. “Naturalization grants voting rights and access to one of the world’s most powerful passports. It should not come with lighter requirements than permanent residency,”

    Does that mean they will make the PR process easier? Lol /s

  20. Foreigners are like 4% of the population though, when will they stop blaming us for everything that’s bad in this country.

  21. > charge health insurance from the start, make obtaining a driver’s license more stringent, etc.

    vs.

    > potentially make citizenship even harder (e.g. 15 years) than PR and not change anything about the current broken PR process

    You can’t have both.

    Despite whatever reasonable changes happen w.r.t. tourism, health insurance, driving, etc. if you make residency and the ability to live here long-term harder to get, you are trying to follow the Dubai/Norway/Swiss etc. model. You expect people to come here for a few years, and then leave before they settle down. You’re accept that you’re going to get people who are absolutely mercenary about living here because they’re only in it for how much they get out of it rather than what they put in.

    Problem is, Japan isn’t anything like Dubai. Low wages, high taxes, no one speaks the lingua franca of the current era, polite but unwelcoming people, depressed salaries, even more depressed people, abysmal work culture, etc. To the degree that other developing Asian countries are starting to outpace you in both areas i.e. as a place to invest for the long-term AND as a more comfortable place to live in, especially for a local.

    And there are just not _that_ many people who really actually want to live here.

    Westerners get tired after a few years of being treated like apes in a zoo. China is always one attempt at Taiwan away from Japan turning super hostile to their people (and that’s if the current political situation of Japanese nationals being murdered at random isn’t already heading that way). The South & Southeast Asians come here to make a bit more money, but soon their own economies and quality of life are starting to catch up. You don’t need to be as good as Japan for it to be so that many people start to see that the juice is not worth the squeeze.

    Personally, all the measures around driving or insurance etc. sound reasonable enough, if a bit annoying. Most western countries expect you to have insurance paid for during the time that you’re being enrolled into their own system.

    If they make the PR somewhat more reasonable, that would be fantastic. Or if they make citizenship take longer but then allow for dual-citizenship as well.

  22. Japan will soon find out why they have a policy to allow foreigners to convert their license to a Japanese license without a test – because the countries that they allow this for also allow their citizens the same. If they require tests of foreigners than those countries in kind will require tests from Japanese citizens.

    As to the health insurance payments, if the majority of the people who are skipping out on this are students, why not hold the schools responsible? Charge the school the health insurance premium fee and have them collect from their students.

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