Do I need to pay pension contributions in Japan if I am on a Long Term Tourist visa? If you have landed on this page, you have probably read our post on how to get a long term tourist visa in Japan. We often get asked questions in the comments about tax, insurance and pensions. So here is a bit of an update.
Pension Payment Request
Last week we received a request for us to pay pension contributions. This was the first request we’ve received since we first got our visa (now onto our third one). These days there’s a lot of noise about foreigners. We’ve seen a lot of articles about visa’s not being renewed if you don’t pay pension so we got worried. A quick search generally says you must pay pension and insurance if you live here more than 3 months.
When we first came, we did pay the national health insurance. However, after a few months we got a refund saying we weren’t eligible as we were on a tourist visa. So as far as we were concerned it was the same for pension.
When we checked the nenkin website, it shows that we would fall into Category 1. This states all registered residents of Japan aged 20-59 years who are not Category Ⅱ or Ⅲ insured persons. As we must register our address when we get our residence card, this includes us. However there is also a note that says [Note] Foreign nationals with specific visa (medical stay or long stay for sightseeing) are excluded from coverage: they cannot enroll in the National Pension as the Category Ⅰ or Ⅲ insured persons.
So we wanted to get things clarified as we didn’t want to run the risk of any extension or future visa being denied as we had just ignored the letters.
Pension Office Visit
Today we went to the pension office (which is in a different location from the ward office). We took the forms we had received in the post and the website print out showing we were excluded. We also took our residence cards and passports. Thankfully there was no wait, and with the help of Google translate we explained our situation. We filled out a form giving authority to look into our records and off the lady went for about 20 minutes.
When she came back she had 6 forms, 2 for each year (2023, 2024 & 2025). We were told that first we had to apply for the pension payments for each year, and then we would need to apply for an exemption of payment. This shows that you are aware of the requirement for pension contributions but are also exempt. They told us if you don’t register, then this may cause problems with future visa renewals and extensions. So we had 1 form for application and 1 for exemption, for each year we’d held the residence card.
They had found our records and they had written down on each form the dates in each year we had received our residence cards and exited. So they systems are very clearly linked with immigration. You only need to apply for the dates that you held your residence card. As we have used a mixture of temporary tourist visa and residence card it was a bit messy. On the exemption forms we had to write on where we had came from when we entered Japan each time. For us it was a bit hard to remember as we have been in and out quite a lot. It was also confusing for the staff as initially they assumed we just came between Japan and the UK!
The Wait
Anyway, after about 3 hours we were done with all the forms. We got a copy of each one to take away. We were told that it will take about 2 months to receive the exemption confirmation. In the meantime if we get any notices to pay, we need to just ignore them until the confirmation comes through.
So now we wait! Once we have received any further information I’ll update here.
Just thought I’d give you all a heads up so you don’t just think about ignoring the notices. It’s definitely worth doing if you don’t want to have any issues with any future approvals.
Let us know in the comments below if you have any similar or diffeent experiences on the topic of paying pension contributions in Japan on the long term tourist visa.
Woof woof, Wylie x
Dang, I got the same notice and was gonna ignore it like the tax payment thing they sent one time (where I did go to the office and they said it was ok to ignore since I had no income)
Tbh we were going to but then we’ve seen a lot of articles saying they’ll most likely not renew visas if you don’t pay it etc so we wanted to be 100% sure.
It felt like a total waste of time if I’m honest, as if you aren’t eligible to apply what’s the point in doing all the forms to apply and then to apply for an exemption? It doesn’t really make sense.
But we didn’t want to take any risks and since they are the pension office we took their advice. We thought it better to spend a couple of hours and make sure we had done everything we could than play dumb later on.
Now we have the copies of the forms we feel at least we’ve done something to show we were willing to pay even if we aren’t able to.
Which sounds a bit crazy but makes sense to us 😂
For the tax form when we went they told us to fill it in but just to put that we lived here on savings. So that they had something on record for us.
I really think it depends on which ward your office is in though, and most likely which person you get on the day!
Also you still need to do this paperwork even though they have access to the immigration system that has all the info that shows you don’t need to pay it?
You would think that by accessing it they’d know you didn’t have to pay it but we felt that the fact that they had access to the system, clearly could see all the dates we had the residence cards (as the dates were the dates we got the card and the dates we left Japan and had the card invalidated) not the dates we entered on the temporary visa and date of expiry of the card. By having this and then them still asking to fill the forms we felt that meant we really had to fill them out.
But it could be a mistake from the person we saw or just that they don’t know so are being on the safe side.
Everything attached to this visa seems to baffle everyone so I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else’s experience at a different office (or possibly even the same one) would be totally different 😂
Personally we like to have things written down in some way so we felt this was at least we have something to show we tried!
Ok, well I had a very diff experience than you. I went to the pension office and only had to fill out the exemption form. It took like 10 minutes to explain and finish everything
I had my my number card, residence card, and passport. They photocopied the paper stapled in my passport as evidence I was on the tourist visa
They said I didn’t have to do it for the previous stays
I have intermediate Japanese, so I guess we figured it out with their English combined
That’s great! We never bothered getting a My Number card after the first one as we never used it and the second time the ward office said not to bother. I wonder if that made any difference. I have a feeling with most of these things it depends no who you get on the day though!
what is my number card? I am getting my second six months approved soon , or even approved and I do not want to pay any pensions at all and leave before that happens
My Number card is the ID card that people use to access stuff like their pension contributions, national health insurance etc. You can also use it to get your proof of residency from the conbini printers etc rather than having to go to ward office. We’ve never needed one so we didn’t bother applying for it after our first one expired with our first residence card. Like I mention in the post, on this long term sightseeing visa, you are exempted from pension contributions, but based on our experience, you need to fill out a form to confirm your exemption.
Hi, sharing a rather different experience here. After reading your post on the pension notice, I was getting worried that I wasn’t getting mine in my letterbox. Today I finally received a letter from the pension office. But it wasn’t a payment notice, it’s a “Certificate of Exclusion from National Pension Coverage for Category I / III Insured Persons”, which states the period of exclusion and the reason being “Long-term stay for sightseeing or recreation”. Somehow for our case, they knew we weren’t eligible from the national pension and sent the certificates to us. Needless to say, we were absolutely delighted. Certainly saves us a trip to the pension office and the pain of explanation!
Oh wow, that’s amazing and makes total sense! I was thinking that if they can see the immigration system to see the dates wouldn’t it just make sense to give the automatic exemption.
I wonder if they maybe got a few applications for exemptions and thought this is a total waste of everyone’s time 😂
Hoping our exemption comes through soon 🤞🏼
So yesterday we got our big chunk of payment requests for each month we need to pay, then today we got through our cards confirming we are fully exempted! Seems a bit of a long winded way to do things but hopefully by us having done it once, it’s helped ease the process for others, since the comments now seem to suggest they are just automatically giving the exemption now!
If anyone else has any experience, please let us know!
It seems like the process differs depending on which branch office/ officer is handling it. Not sure if you have received the same exclusion certificate as us, on the back of the exclusion certificate, it says:
“You need to report to JPS Branch Office when;
– your status of residence is changed and approved.
– your period of stay is changed and approved.”
Which I gather it means each time we receive a new visa and also its extension, we’ll need to head down to the pension office to “report” so they can exclude us from the national pension scheme. While it’s not a big deal but it is an unnecessary hassle, and waste of time for both parties.
Yes it always seems the same with all these processes, that it depends on which branch you go to. Our experience was at Taito ward.
I agree with your understanding too. Which is the same for the Ward office, having to report the address every time we get a new card. We realised last time that everything you do auto expires when the card does. We always re register at the ward office every time we get a new card but we didn’t re register our hanko. When we last went to get a hanko certificate they couldn’t find it registered (and we had forgotten to take our Hanko registration card) so we also had to re register that with the new residence card.
All seems a bit unnecessary and could be made so much more streamlined but I guess with it being such a minute number of people on this type of visa to make changes is probably more work than just doing the lengthy process every time!
I’ve just checked our extension and it actually says (via Google translate) Fully exempted, application for continued review has been accepted. It goes on to say in the previous fiscal year you requested for full exemption for the following year and beyond and your request was subsequently approved.
On the back page it says if your circumstances change (eg if you become unemployed or the head of the household changes) you can reapply for the exemption. It doesn’t mention anything about status of residence or period of stay.
It was a small blue card that opened up into 3 pages. I may have missed something as I was using Google translate for it though!
Thanks for posting this! I’m here on this visa (currently on the one-time extension), gearing up to leave early next year in March. I haven’t received any notices about pension or tax payments to this point, but want to make sure I’m all squared away before I head back to my home country.
What are the different departments I need to check in with (is it pension and tax?). I’m assuming they’re both located in the city or ward office my address is registered in?
Thank you!
In our ward the pension office is in a different location to the ward office, we had to Google it to find the location. But you can ask at the ward office also as they will know where it is.
Hmmm, what I received isn’t a blue card. My certificate of exclusion from national pension is a single piece of A4 paper, written in both Japanese and English. Under its Section 5 “Reason for coverage exclusion”, it has only 2 options: (5a) Medical stay or attendant of a person on medical stay, and (5b) Long-term stay for sightseeing or recreation, or an accompanying spouse thereof”. For our certificate, (5b) was circled. What’s puzzling is that the back page of your blue card mentions conditions like “if you become unemployed or….”. Our type of visa doesn’t allow employment, so it seems contradictory, doesn’t it? Could it be that the person at your ward office applied the process meant for Japanese citizens or foreigners holding other visa types of visa who are subject to National pension but eligible to apply for exemption? Regardless, for now, we are all logged into their system as either excluded or exempted (depending on which process was used!) Until the next visa period, a new national pension exclusion adventure awaits!
Oh that’s interesting. I think you are right. As our office processed an application first and then an exemption and we got the payment slips. So I think a different method. The main thing is we have the exemption to show! I hope next time we just get the automatic exemption like you 🤞🏼
We went to the Pension Office today and were exempted fairly quickly – though we haven’t got any official certificate saying that just yet. Before going we printed out the pdf exemption form linked to from http://www.nenkin.go.jp/shinsei/kokunen/kanyu/tokuteikatsudo.html (in black and white). We also followed the form’s instructions and photocopied our residence cards (both sides) and the Shiteisho form stapled to our passport. I explained to the lady handling us that our visa was the one on the exemption form and we should be exempt. She asked for our passport (not a copy) before excusing herself and coming back 10 minutes later asking us to update the Individual Number on the form. It seems they want a Pension number, not the Residence card number, and as we didn’t have one, she had generated a temporary one that we wrote in at her direction. We’d also written our name in the wrong order – she wanted the Family/First name order, and the start date is the first date on the residence card. And that was it. Having the form helped her understand exactly what we were trying to achieve. Now we will just wait for a certificate.
That’s great news, I’m glad everyone else has had more of a streamlined process than we did. Hopefully it means there’s a bit more understanding of the visa now!
I went to the pension office today and the lady there told me to fill out and mail back a form for being exempt from Japanese pension payments via “international agreement”. I also need to attach a Certificate of Coverage from US Social Security. Just looking into it, getting that certificate involves informing the US government that I’m on “work assignment” to Japan, which I’m not, I’m just on a long term tourist visa.
I’m thinking maybe this particular pension office worker got it wrong and I need to go back again?
For this visa the expansion is not via the international agreement, it’s simply an exemption because of the visa type. So I think the lady at the office was confused. It’s better to go back with the confirmation that’s it’s the designated activities visa for long term sightseeing exemption you are applying for
We just received our new residence cards (extension), so we went to the pension office to report our new period of stay. We showed the pension staff the portion of our certificate of exclusion that says we need to report our new period of stay. She handed us a form (blue) and told us to fill it in and check the option that says “Applying for pension-related matters.” I told her (via Google Translate) again that we are here for an exclusion, and she nodded. So we filled it out, and she went off with our new residence cards and passports. After a while, she came back with a new form (orange) that says “Application for Exclusion from National Pension Coverage for Category I / III Insured Persons” and had us fill it out. She went off again, and when she came back, she returned our cards/passports and told us everything was done. So now we are waiting for the new certificate of exclusion to arrive. All in all, it took about half an hour.
Perfect that sounds similar to what we did originally 🙂