RetireJapan

Many thanks. I'll give it a shot. It's totally outrageous that the IRS makes is so complicated and expensive just to file a tax return. Would you happen to know if U.S. citizens are required to report capital gains or dividends that accrue within a NISA account? I certainly agree with you that this...

There are two workarounds to the problem of FEIE essentially canceling out earned income up to the limits of deductible Traditional or direct Roth contributions. The first workaround is to not take FEIE. For our kids, who had some earned income in Japan that was still below the standard deduction, w...

This is why financial institutions like banks and brokerage firms are not supposed to give tax advice. They don't know. There are a variety of ways (FBAR, form 8621 if these really are PFICs, form 8938, etc.) in which they might potentially have to be "reported" and the US doesn't recogniz...

“ But one would expect the markets to recover” It took in excess 15 years recover from the 1929 crash and the Nikkei took in excess 30 hope we do not see something like this The recovery for stocks in the US was only 5 (for broad market) to 7 (for the DOW) years after the 1929 crash if you account ...

I don't think this is a gift tax issue (which in any case doesn't apply until 1,100,000 yen in gifts are received in a single tax year). When you send your own money to yourself that is not a gift and both spouses can contribute to the purchase of a house.

That makes a lot of sense, since most if not all of the people I know with dual citizenship have a Japanese mom and an American (military) dad. You do realize that most international marriages in Japan are between a Japanese man and a foreign woman, right? I know this is true (I understand that it ...

Long very technical discussion on here, with the end result that the only person arguing that iDeCo is fine kind of gave up. https://www.reddit.com/r/JapanFinance/comments/14xjws8/us_citizens_and_ideco/ So as far as I am concerned it is still a grey area. Shame, I would love to be able to refer peo...

Morningstar reported fund flows for Japan and noted the unusually high net inflows with the start of the new NISA but also reports that the bulk of those funds went to "world equity" funds. JPY 1.3 Trillion Net Inflows: More Than 4 Times in One Month In January, the new NISA, or Nippon Ind...

I also like these market cap visualizations. Keep in mind that the total of every box you see on that page is right around the current market cap of NVDIA (which 10 years ago had a market cap of under $11 billion, lower than any single company on that page now). In relative terms the market caps of ...

I am not sure about the rules in Japan but all Unit Investment Trusts in the US are required to have an expiration date. This is even true for the enormously successful SPY ETF (expires 2118) and the QQQ ETF (expires in 2124). More broadly, the majority of mutual funds and ETFs are not successful an...