Work in Japan through a company in the UK
 

I just tried to call the embassy of Japan in London about this, and they have to be the most useless people I have spoken to for quite some time.

At the very end of August I am planning to go to Japan to get married and apply for a spouse visa.
Originally I was planning to get an English teaching job over there after getting the spouse visa because I was under the impression I would have to leave my current company in the UK.

Well, I no longer have to do this (or at least, I don't have to get a teaching job straight away)
My boss has said that he wants to keep me on a rolling 3 month contract, which is great, but it brings up a few important questions for me.

First of all, I will not actually be a part of my current company anymore, but I will be hired by them as a contractor on a 3 month rolling contract, so I will have to invoice them for work done which would be paid into a UK bank account.
Since I am from the UK it means that I don't have to apply for any visa to enter Japan - They just stamp the passport with something that says I can stay for 90 days.
My first question is, will I be allowed to continue my work for the company in the UK even while I only have this 90 day visitor stamp in my passport?

I will be working for a company based in the UK, and all of the money will be earned through the UK, not Japan.
So should I be allowed to do the work, or not?
I tried checking the embassy of Japan in London's website, and it says that on this 90 day stamp temporary business is allowed, but I'm not sure whether this actually applies to my situation or not.
For your information I write the code for web application so all of my work is internet based.

(The reason the embassy in London is useless is because their answer to this was "Who knows..." :confused: )

My second question is, assuming I am allowed to work for the UK company while I am in Japan on my 90 visitor stamp who do I pay tax to?
I assume that if I was allowed to work, I would initially pay tax to the UK, because I am not actually living in Japan yet.
But when I get a spouse visa, do I then switch to paying taxes to Japan?
It may sound like a stupid question but this stuff is confusing me...

Any help is appreciated - If anyone can actually give me any help with this stuff :p

The work visa is for permission to work in Japan, for a Japanese company.
People work while on vacation all the time doing conference calls or fixing code for a few hours from a wifi hotspot in a cafe for a few hours. There are no restrictions on any visitor visa in any contract on doing distance work during the visit.

While on a visitor visa, you pay tax to the UK.

After you get a spousal visa, you pay tax to the UK as you're still their citizen and to Japan. The good news is most countries require far less or no tax to be paid if you are residing abroad.

If you change your citizenship, passport, to Japan, you pay tax only to Japan.

You need to claim your income with the local government in Japan.

If your income is deposited in an off-shore account, you need to claim what the money is for when you send it to Japan, Cost of Living is obviously the reason.

It will be VERY easy for you to pay no tax on that income in Japan, and if the UK doesn't demand tax for nationals living abroad, then you'll be taxless.
The laws were not designed to consider people working in those conditions, hence the fuzzy gray area answers you got.

It's true that you don't need a special visa just to visit Japan as a UK citizen, so that's ok. ^^ I should think that as you are a UK citizen, hired by a UK company and most importantly, considering that the work is presumably not the -purpose- of your trip to Japan, you would not be eligible for the work visa anyway. The work is basically incidental to your being in Japan; it's like you went on holiday and then decided to spend every day in your hotel room studying for an exam rather than sightsee; that's your choice. If you must be in Japan specifically for the purpose of doing the work (eg, need to consult with Japanese professionals, have meetings, investigate a location etc), or you will be working in a Japanese based office type situation, then probably you should have a proper work visa. You could look into applying for the working holiday visa- it's a year, i think exempt from Japanese tax and would permit you to do casual unspecified work in Japan for one year.

On the tax you would continue to pay UK tax until you actually secure a long term visa like the spouse visa or a work visa and also inform the UK IR that you are living abroad as an expat. You will be exempt from tax on the condition that you spend less than 6 weeks per year in the UK, i think, and any job you take on in Japan, you will be obliged to pay Japanese tax for. For more details, you should probably contact your tax office as these kids of things change quite often. Speak to the Inland Revenue or see if your county council offers any informational service.

Thank you very much RealJames and Columbine for your advice!
I feel a bit better about everything now that I have some answers to go from which weren't composed of the words "who" and "knows" :)

You are not allowed to work in Japan with a visitor/tourist visa, period. Once you get your spouse visa (which is not automatic, your spouse will have to prove that they earn enough money to support the two of you), then getting a job is easy.

If you are in Japan on assignment from another country, then you aren't technically working in Japan. You will need to open a bank account in Japan to get paid here, and you cannot open an account with a tourist visa. If you are getting paid into a UK account and are simply withdrawing money from an ATM in Japan, you will be okay in the short term, but anything over 200,000 yen per month withdrawn in Japan may be taxable, especially if you change to a spouse visa.

Just to let everyone know, I finally got a proper answer from the embassy in London today (After calling and asking 3 times, one of the phone operators had the bright idea of going and asking someone who knew about it)

They said that as long as the work has nothing to do with Japan and all money is earned etc in the UK and working is not the purpose of my trip, then it is fine to continue any work required of me in the UK via the internet on a temporary visitor visa (Or whatever the 90 day stamp in the passport is called).
I just thought I would post that just in case anybody wanted to see what the embassy themselves told me.

Once again thank you all for your time and advice :)

Good to hear you finally got a definitive response, Yuri. ^^ Good luck with your life in Japan!