Ratio of assets for a couple

[TJKansai]

Inspired by a recent thread viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1749, I thought this might be a good poll/discussion.

With couples who have two similar incomes, it probably isn't as much of an issue, but in cases where only one person is working full time, I wonder how you all deal with this.

Legally, we are limited to what we can gift our spouse/partner, but I have the feeling the tax office won't go after you unless you dump large sums into their account (like millions of yen in a single year). If you are paying for household expenses via the partner's bank account, then I think it is kosher. Of course, there is a chance I am completely wrong on this.

Funding the family's NISA won't get you to the yearly limit, but I imagine anyone determined to split things fairly would be adding more than the limit.

Adding in assets in your childrens' names would make it hard to poll, so let's exclude those.

[RetireJapan]

We both work, and our surplus income is similar, so we've ended up close to 50-50.

[Beaglehound]

Inspired by a recent thread viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1749, I thought this might be a good poll/discussion.

With couples who have two similar incomes, it probably isn't as much of an issue, but in cases where only one person is working full time, I wonder how you all deal with this.

Legally, we are limited to what we can gift our spouse/partner, but I have the feeling the tax office won't go after you unless you dump large sums into their account (like millions of yen in a single year). If you are paying for household expenses via the partner's bank account, then I think it is kosher. Of course, there is a chance I am completely wrong on this.

Funding the family's NISA won't get you to the yearly limit, but I imagine anyone determined to split things fairly would be adding more than the limit.

Adding in assets in your childrens' names would make it hard to poll, so let's exclude those.

I delved into the shared spousal assets morass when we were building our house. I did in fact dump millions of yen into my partner’s bank account, not realising gift tax was a thing. In fact the cash came from the sale of a jointly owned property in the UK, so it was legit to share it, but when I went to the tax office (pre-emptively) to explain, they didn’t seem fussed and didn’t ask for any proof. So I share your feeling that spousal assets and who pays for what are likely low priority for the tax folk.

[TJKansai]

I delved into the shared spousal assets morass when we were building our house. I did in fact dump millions of yen into my partner’s bank account, not realising gift tax was a thing. In fact the cash came from the sale of a jointly owned property in the UK, so it was legit to share it, but when I went to the tax office (pre-emptively) to explain, they didn’t seem fussed and didn’t ask for any proof. So I share your feeling that spousal assets and who pays for what are likely low priority for the tax folk.

Come to think of it, I think I did something similar when I put 8 million in my wife's Citibank (JP) account in prep for our house downpayment. It never crossed my mind to explain, but then again I had little info since RetireJapan didn't exist at the time .

[bryanc]

just did this last month transferring 12million in 1million units to my wifes acct for 12 days to pay off mortgage