[laurieg]

Is you are on a tourist visa then you cannot work. Actively working as a nomad ok a tourist visa waiver is breaking the law.

Of course, nomads often did come and with in this status. They would exist in a grey area, arguing their with was more incidental in nature and bit the reason to be in Japan (just like replying to a few with emails while in holiday).

The nomad visa is essentially formalizing this grey area. As other commentors have mentioned, it's not a particularly useful status as you don't get a residence card and you can enroll in national health insurance too. You'll also find it harder to find apartments to rent too

[d13]

No one will ever know or care if you’re working remotely while in Japan on a tourist visa. Just AirBnB and get ordinary travel insurance.

For a paltry 6 months this nomad visa seems like a massive amount of paperwork for no benefit.

[lIl-IIIl]

Apparently they do, from the article quoting the US Embassy:

Japanese Immigration officials are aware of the pattern of people staying for 80-90 days as “tourists,” spending a few days in Korea, Guam or some other nearby area and then seeking to re-enter Japan for another 90 days. Persons with such a travel pattern can expect to face questions at Japanese Immigration and may be denied entry with the suspicion that they have been or will work illegally in Japan. In that Japanese Immigration records are computerized, a “lost” passport does not serve to mask long stays in Japan.

[notpushkin]

I think it’s mostly for the visa runs, not the woking per se. (I would still not recommend it, especially not if you are planning on getting a permanent residence status later on.)

[csunbird]

Well, EU prevents this kind of workaround by restricting stays to 90 days within 180 days period, so leaving EU for a couple of days after a stay of 90 days and coming back to stay another 90 days won't work, you will go over your quota.

[bamboozled]

Imagine if they just had a sane immigration policy instead ?

[jalapenos]

I'm guessing your opinion is that western immigration policies, shall we say "unique" vs the rest of the world, are "sane". Maybe you're not aware on which side of the asylum walls you're standing.

[yunohn]

Well, the USA and EU are also equally (if not more) strict about not working on tourist or business visas. You have to get a work visa.

[Klonoar]

There is technically a “hidden” six month tourist visa if you can show you have a significant amount of money in your bank account. In practice all it does is save you an entry/exit.

[Mistletoe]

Who do you show the significant amount of money to and how?

[hiatus]

This page appears to have more information:

https://www.mofa.go.jp/ca/fna/page22e_000738.html

The amount seems to be 30 million yen or just under $200k.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

What is the definition of work?

If you mainly passively own a business in a different country, is that work?

If you mainly passively manage your portfolio of foreign assets, is that work?

[hiatus]

Seems like a question better directed to the relevant country's authorities.

[jalapenos]

Right so it's a compliance thing.

Rather than just visiting on a tourist visa and relying on the fact that no immigration officer is going to come bust in your hotel door and yell "hey are you doing work on that laptop!", you go through a bunch of tedious bureaucratic hoops to get the assurance that they definitely for certain won't come inspect what you're doing on your laptop.

[djtango]

People are being too individualistic here - Japan or any other country is never going to go after individuals who happen to work for remote companies or freelance while they globe trot working on tourist visas.

But when companies like Shopify go fully remote, if they suddenly have a lot of employees who are frequenting Japan, they are painting a giant target on their back and exposing themselves to legal risk. A company is never going to expose themselves to this kind of legal risk so HR will very quickly (and understandably) clamp down on this. This is why even the most progressive "work from anywhere" policies tend to have fine print that amounts to "your country of residence and any home countries you can legally work in". This is then why we often see "remote" coming with all kinds of conditions like US remote or EU remote etc because the reality of legal compliance for HR is a huge headache.

These nomad visas are a baby step in the right direction towards unburdening companies from this liability.

[naniwaduni]

Also, while they're unlikely to spend resources toward going after individuals who happen to work remotely on a tourist visa, it's comparatively trivial to pull people out at entry (and that's going to be a regular and well-documented occurrence because the alternative of overstaying your visa is absolutely something countries with governments tend to care about).

[djtango]

What circumstance are you referring to with "at entry"?

[jonasdegendt]

Leaving and coming back on a new tourist visa within a short time frame, as opposed to just overstaying your initial tourist visa in the first place.

[notpushkin]

> This is then why we often see "remote" coming with all kinds of conditions like US remote or EU remote etc because the reality of legal compliance for HR is a huge headache.

Could they just hire those individuals as contractors instead? It should be up to the contractor to ensure compliance then. (IANAL)

[michaelt]

First of all, that's complicated and employees can easily fuck it up.

I once worked at a tiny company, and their first 'contractor' employee didn't realise he had to set aside money for certain taxes, and didn't realise he'd have to record certain details to be able to fill out certain forms, and things like that.

This ended up being a bunch of hassle for the company as he... thought? hoped? expected? that they were paying those taxes, as they would have done if he was a regular employee. Now the guy's resentful, feels you've ripped him off, and is constantly distracted.

Secondly, there can still be local laws you have to comply with. Some countries have problems with sham contractor arrangements, where they insist their normal, regular employees are 'self-employed contractors' to avoid giving them sick pay, holiday, pension, maternity leave, minimum wage, redundancy pay, complying with safety rules, and so on. So they have laws saying that under certain circumstances, contractors effectively turn into regular employees.

As I can't read Kazakh, how am I supposed to know if the Kazakhstani tax code has similar rules?

[notpushkin]

> I once worked at a tiny company, and their first 'contractor' employee didn't realise he had to set aside money for certain taxes

It's a valid concern. Should be easy to solve though: add a reminder to the employee handbook, and also remind them to check out local tax codes and set aside money.

> Some countries have problems with sham contractor arrangements

This usually doesn't apply to cross-border relationships though (which we implicitly focus on here I think, given this is a thread about moving to Japan). It is possible in theory, of course, for tax authorities to go after international contractors clayming they are international employees, but I haven't heard about such cases yet.

But there's an easy way to distinguish employment and contractor relationships: if you set a specific goal and a deadline, and do not tell them how to do the job, you have a contractor. (The goal does have to be specific, though, but you can say in your contract that you will use Jira tickets for that, I believe.)

I think that overlaps pretty well with most remote work. Specifics might differ, but as a general rule this is it what tax authorities pretty much everywhere will look for.

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer nor a tax advisor, just doing a lot of freelance and run an Estonian LLC for fun

[djtango]

Some do but from observation lawyers/HR find reasons to resist this.

The most likely explanation is there could be risk but there is zero risk associated with saying no so legal and HR say no to this arrangement because they don't want more work and legal and HR are cost centres so they can't magically pull budget out of thin air to appease some annoying digital nomads. A company is also not going to let their entire workforce of full time employees transition to contractors overnight either, which would be a giant headache for both HR and senior management.

For example VCs prefer "headcount" over contractors for a number of reasons so there is pressure from the top to incentivise full time employees. Large multinationals have a lot of considerations around taxation (its always taxes...)

These are some of the practicalities I've uncovered that provide inertia towards remote working

[notpushkin]

Makes sense, thanks!

> A company is also not going to let their entire workforce of full time employees transition to contractors overnight either

This could actually look like tax evasion (in countries with lower taxes for sole proprietors / self-employed people), so not a great idea in any case.

[jalapenos]

Long story short, it's a complete quagmire, especially since you're bringing cross-border tax issues into play.

A small company that doesn't know much about compliance may be happy to call it "freelance", but any bigger company with a professional HR person is going to balk at it, because they want certainty they're compliant, e.g. no misclassification.

They're much more likely to be happy about it if you can stick a local LLC between you and them though.

[Ekaros]

Well whole contractor status is very murky in many places. Either very strict like in UK. Or then you need all sorts of agreements in between, meaning that you might need to give cut to some third company. And then those companies have same problems.

Even inside EU with freedom of movement spending more than 180 days in single country can lead to tax implications. Doing this globally is even bigger mess as ways of counting time might not be the same.

[notpushkin]

> Or then you need all sorts of agreements in between, meaning that you might need to give cut to some third company. And then those companies have same problems.

It could be a viable solution actually. There’s a bunch of companies that can both employ or subcontract a person on behalf of another company.

I think if the company is not against it in principle, it becomes just another negotiation point, e.g. you can agree to a lower net salary so that the gross amount the company has to pay is the same (including the middleman fee).

[GardenLetter27]

There are cases of this being enforced against individuals in the USA and UK after posting on social media though.

[jalapenos]

It's like this: basically everyone who's ever driven a car has broken the law, gone over the speed limit etc.

But if you video it, broadcast it on social media that "OMG I'm driving so fast LOL!", encourage others to do the same, and tag the account of the local police, the situation is different.

[ghaff]

I have to assume that’s pretty rare but I probably wouldn’t post that I’m working remotely or use a co-working space.