If you are in charge of expansion in Japan, you need to decide the form of your business in japan. There are three business forms you can choose from.
The most general way is making an affiliated company. We have two major types of company forms. I have explained these forms in the article “Forms of companies”. Companies established in Japan are the same as a Japanese company even they are established by foreign capital.
The second way is making a branch. It means you must register your foreign company itself directly. In this case the process is a somewhat complex, as the matters to be registered by a Japanese company law are often different from those in your country. The matters written in the articles of incorporation are also different. So, you need to make an affidavit to fill in every matter for registration. It is necessary to have one person who has an address in Japan as a representative in Japan at least. Therefore, you need to obtain a visa first or look for a cooperator. In Japan corporate inhabitant tax is decided depending on the scale of companies. If the company in your own country is very large, you will need to pay a high amount of tax in japan even if it has few staff and is of a small scale. Therefore, it is rare to start a business with a branch.
The third way is making a representative office. There are no matters you need to register. You apply for a visa of “engineer, human knowledge and international services” as a representative in Japan first. Then you make a contract for the estate of the office under your personal name. This is a main way for preparing to start business in Japan before carrying out full scale operation.
Which way you should choose depends on the situation of each company. We will support you any way that we can.
Related pages
Issues in setting up businesses in Japanhttps://visajapan.tokyo/issues-businesses-in-japan/
Starting a business in Japan while overseas.https://visajapan.tokyo/business/
Start Up Visahttps://visajapan.tokyo/tokyop/