[setr]

>although I couldn't actually do it... because in order to rent a place I need a company and in order to form a company I need an address... so... well, it didn't quite work out

Couldn’t you get the building first, register as a corporation, then subsidize all following months through the corporation?

[mikekchar]

Unfortunately no. The corporation has to either buy or rent the building and it is not allowed to rent it from the owner of the company (and rent it back again at a loss -- for obvious reasons ;-) ). I could potentially buy a building, sell it to my company and have the company rent back my living space. But my company doesn't have anywhere near enough money to buy a building outright. Also in Japan, new companies are treated as toxic waste by the banks, so no loan is possible (and probably "I'd like to get a loan to buy a building and rent it back to myself at a loss to the corporation" is not a viable business plan as far as the bank is concerned anyway...). I can't even get a corporate credit card! We do all of our transactions in cash, if you can believe it.

What I could do is rent a building with the corporation now and move the corporation. The problem is that you have to reincorporate the company at the new address (which would cost me about $3K). Japan is the land of bureaucracy after all! (Edit: I will likely do this if we decide to move since I'll have to pay that money anyway).

The tax break is really to accommodate companies that build a new factory and then build housing for the factory (or a house next to the factory for the owner). It's not really intended to be used the way I want to use it (to literally live in the work space).