RetireJapan

This is very much in 'ask your accountant' territory, but I like to do my own research before going to my accountant and I'd love to know if anyone has a similar experience.

I'm about to set up a KK with only myself on the payroll. With less than 5 regular employees, I don't have to enrol in kosei nenkin. But I'm wondering if it might be worth it to do so anyway. I've done much googling but, as is to be expected, all results are about avoiding KN enrolment. I've also tried using the calculator on nenkin net attempt to simulate it, sadly I can't make heads or tails of it.

For me it seems to work out that I pay about five times the price of kokumin nenkin for kosei nenkin (if you take into account that my employer also pays), for about 2.5 times the eventual payout.

Health insurance is also more expensive if you are paying both sides (the employee and the employer). My wife is a sole proprietor with a couple of employees and has avoided shakai hoken so far.

Given that kokumin nenkin allows you to put away 68,000 yen of pre-tax income into iDeCo (as opposed to 23,000 for kosei nenkin), I'm not sure there is much economic sense in enrolling in shakai hoken.

However, a friend of ours has a KK (she's the only employee) and she was forced to go onto shakai hoken, so the rules may have changed.

My wife's business is not incorporated.

RetireJapan wrote: ↑Mon Jun 17, 2019 11:09 am
Given that kokumin nenkin allows you to put away 68,000 yen of pre-tax income into iDeCo (as opposed to 23,000 for kosei nenkin), I'm not sure there is much economic sense in enrolling in shakai hoken.

A lot of quality candidates won't apply for jobs which don't offer basic benefits like shakai hoken. In most (or many cases) the candidates and their parents won't be particularly aware of iDeCo - so it doesn't matter which scheme is better.


In general, Japanese graduates want to work for big companies. A tiny company which doesn't offer the basic benefits can't expect to attract the best candidates.

Sybil wrote: ↑Tue Jun 18, 2019 12:32 am A lot of quality candidates won't apply for jobs which don't offer basic benefits like shakai hoken. In most (or many cases) the candidates and their parents won't be particularly aware of iDeCo - so it doesn't matter which scheme is better.

Sure, but the original question was whether to enrol in shakai hoken voluntarily as a sole proprietor or sole employee/owner of a company.

I was thinking he was the same person who wanted to recruit an employee for his travel agency.....

Jansen wrote: ↑Mon Jun 17, 2019 10:15 am
I'm about to set up a KK with only myself on the payroll. With less than 5 regular employees, I don't have to enrol in kosei nenkin.

You do have to enroll. The less than 5 employees opt-out only applies to sole proprietorship, not GK (like us) or KK (like you). Sorry to be the bearer of expensive bad news.