Bringing back savings from abroad

[RetireJapan]

I think there may be a tax issue with bringing money when you have income abroad (it is presumed that the remittance is from income), so might be best to wait until next year.

Anyone else?

[robster]

Does anyone have any reliable knowledge concerning the burden of proof, when bringing money into Japan that is not being declared as income?
I have 40,000 euro in a bank account in Ireland, savings accumulated partly from money gifted to me in Ireland over 20 years ago, and partly from (taxed) income I sent home from Japan in the past, which i now want to send to Japan. (I have been tax resident in Japan for over 15 years)
My understanding is that I am not liable to pay tax on either of these, so I am intending to wire the money to my bank account in Japan and not mention anything about it on my kakutei-shinkoku next year.
My questions are :
1) do payments of this size get reported by the receiving banks to the tax office?
2) if not, would the tax office have any reason to know about this payment, and come looking for their share?
3) given that I don't have any records of the original payments into the said savings account in ireland, since they were over 10 years ago, what happens in the case that I am unable to prove the source of this money? And what qualifies as acceptable proof?
4) would breaking it down into smaller amounts over several payments, instead of one single payment, let it pass under the radar and avoid the above complications?

Thanks for any advice.

[N00bster]

1) do payments of this size get reported by the receiving banks to the tax office?

Yes. When I was doing wire transfers to my Japanese (Shinsei) bank account from my US equity account, I always got a friendly phone call from the bank asking me what this money was as part of their tax compliance requirement. In my case it was a clear combination of taxable income and capital gain, which I had already declared and paid taxes on, so there was no ambiguity.

If you are not in a hurry, it may save you some trouble if you can split the transfers over time, and maybe over different bank accounts. But maybe the simplest would be to simply ask your local tax office. They tend to be rather nice and assume good faith, and you don't have to leave them your name anyway.

[robster]

Thanks for the advice, N00bster. Will give that a try.

[N00bster]

Yes. When I was doing wire transfers to my Japanese (Shinsei) bank account from my US equity account, I always got a friendly phone call from the bank asking me what this money was as part of their tax compliance requirement. In my case it was a clear combination of taxable income and capital gain, which I had already declared and paid taxes on, so there was no ambiguity.

I forgot to mention that the triggering amount for my bank phone calls was around 2,000,000JPY.

[eyeswideshut]

Interesting, for some reason I though the threshold amount was 1 million JPY before you got the call from the bank.

[sutebayashi]

If the money is yours and you owe no tax on it, I should think you can just remit.

As noted the bank will be required to ask where the money is from, just the honest truth should do. I seem to recall being asked a similar question when remitting USD abroad. I told them it was because I wanted to save USD in a foreign bank account. I haven’t ever been asked further since.

I would not split the remittances up... that sort of thing could be regarded as suspicious, and may give the wrong impression than intended. But your bank will have the best advice no doubt.

[robster]

I have sent the full 36k euro (via Transferwise) to my bank account here -- let's see what happens and I will report back.

[robster]

So, two weeks have passed and no phone call from the bank (MUFJ).
happy to report also that using Transferwise was a pleasant experience, and they keep you well informed at each stage where your money is.

[goodandbadjapan]

Did you have to do it in a few goes? I have never sent to Japan, but from Japan with Transferwise you can (or could) only send up to a million yen at a time.