tax loss harvesting?

[jcc]

Anyone found good info on doing this yourself, especially regarding the laws in Japan and the practicalities in online brokerages.

e.g. I want to move some of my investments from one fund to a near identical one: one example of this is moving from the rakuten vanguard world to emaxis slim(lower costs, better structure for taxation, internal reinvestment of dividends). Seeing as I have a loss on the rakuten vt world I'd like to take advantage of that in the process to reshuffle some other stuff too.

From what I can find on tax loss harvesting however, in the US at least I couldn't claim the loss if I bought essentially the same product within 30 days( https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/washsalerule.asp ), is this the case in japan? How do I determine if switching from a fund-of-funds like rakuten vt to a straight up fund(like emaxis slim) which are essentially very close(main difference being the structure and that eMaxis slim is MSCI ex-japan while VT is FTSE)?

The other half of the question is, is this automated on the online brokers or do I need to file a tax return for this? Like, in the tokutei kouza will they just deduct losses I realized from any dividends?

[jcc]

As no-one seems to know I tried to research what I could. It's hard to find information about issues that might not even exist

So It looks like rakuten at least will add up your gains and losses. However if you want to carry overall losses to the next year you'll need to file a kakutei shinkoku(even if you're using a tokutei account) http://faq.rakuten-sec.co.jp/faq.html?category=163

I cannot find anything in japanese about wash sales in japan, so I presume it isn't a thing in japan. I also can't find anything about claiming a capital gains loss on your regular income(like you could in say the US) so any losses you generate would have to be "cancelled out" by gains(within 3 year).

This site has a fair bit on dealing with capital losses and setting up your account so losses are deducted from taxable dividends, as well as the process of posting for kurikoshi koujo https://orekabu.jp/loss-on-the-stock-market/

[RetireJapan]

Interesting stuff! Thanks for checking it out.

[N00bster]

I also can't find anything about claiming a capital gains loss on your regular income(like you could in say the US)

You cannot as far as I know. So indeed you have 3 years to offset losses with future gains (and must fill a 確定申告 to be able to do that).