RetireJapan

When filling my tax return, I stumbled upon the part where one can declare a Tokutei investment account. This looked weird to me as taxes on these accounts are already paid at the source. Just to make sure, I downloaded my 特定口座年間取引報告書 and filled the numbers, and sure enough, even though my reported income changes a bit, the amount of tax I need to pay remains exactly the same.

Thus my question: do we need to report these accounts with our tax returns? If yes, what would be the justification for doing so? I can think that maybe the additional income could make us enter a higher tax bracket and thus influence the amount of tax, but I am not quite sure of that.

Thus my question: do we need to report these accounts with our tax returns? If yes, what would be the justification for doing so?

My understanding is that we don't have to but there are situations where it can help you. For instance:

1) If you had carryover capital losses from last year (I think you can carryover for up to 3 years) you can get some money back by having them offset dividends and capital gains you collected in this year. To do that you need to file the 確定申告.

2) If you had 2 or more Tokutei accounts and some had net losses while others had net gains for the year, the way to have those losses offset the gains is through your 確定申告.

In any case, my zeirishi always asks for my 特定口座年間取引報告書.

Thanks TokyoWart! Not only have you answered my question perfectly, you also answered another one I asked a while ago.

With that knowledge I will just include my Tokutei account information and attach my 特定口座年間取引報告書 with my tax returns from now on. Minimal hassle, and probably safer.

Just to clarify:

1) I am referring to balancing losses vs gains and dividends in two or more Japan-based (tokutei or ippan) accounts.
2) Unfortunately capital losses in foreign accounts do not carryover for 3 years like they do if they are from Japanese brokerages. I had a long debate with the local tax office about this during an audit and I lost the debate (no surprise there).
3) Foreign losses can offset foreign gains across foreign accounts in the same tax year (e.g. gains in my Fidelity account were offset by losses in my Schwab account) but I have never had the opportunity to apply foreign capital losses against foreign dividend income so I am unsure if that’s possible.