RetireJapan

To be specific, I live in Nakano Ward Tokyo, and need to deal with a big tax problem. I keep reading on various posts about how helpful the people at the tax offices are compared to,for example, staff at the IRS In the US.

In general, has anyone encountered staff who can speak English, my Japanese is certainly not good enough to deal with this, and I’m not sure if I can trust Google translate. Of course I will end up going there, but just want a heads up if it seems like a realistic thing to hope for.

I’d rather not pay for a consultation with an English-speaking tax accountant/lawyer unless it’s absolutely necessary. Thanks

About the only time I went to the tax office the guy that helped me (in Japanese) was telling me about someone he had helped that morning who didn't speak any Japanese, so I'm guessing they'll try to help you even if they might not be able to do so completely fluently.

If you have something specific and complex you want to talk to them about, you might want to call them in advance and see if an English-speaking person will be available.

I had a tax audit a few years ago. One of the people from the tax office was able to speak English to some extend.
It turned out that he was especially trained to do tax audits on foreigners. He came from the next big city. (I live in the country side)
So there are people that speak English and they are hired and trained especially for the purpose of communicating with foreigners.
I guess they are only in big cities. And the problem may be to find them and they may not be willing to work specifically on the
problem you have. But why not simply ask for it or look it up on the internet?

Through the rest of the year, they'd be there to help--or to audit you! But given the rush/crowds over the next few weeks, I'd guess that asking for English-speaking help right now would be near hopeless, tho it might depend on the nature of the question(s)/problem (time needed for any research to answer it).