Registering as a Sole Proprietor (Kojin Jigyounushi)

Registering as a sole proprietor (個人事業主, kojin jigyōnushi, "individual business operator") for tax purposes means filing a one-page opening notification with your local tax office.¹ Miss the companion blue-form application window and you leave up to 650,000 JPY in deductions on the table for the year.²³

Confirm current details with official sources

Procedures, fees, and requirements can change. Confirm current details at the National Tax Agency site. This article is general information, not legal, tax, or immigration advice; for your specific case, consult a licensed tax accountant (zeirishi) on filing positions, or an immigration lawyer or gyoseishoshi on whether your status of residence permits freelance work.

Overview

This article is for freelancers preparing for tax compliance: newly arrived residents starting client work, employees transitioning to independent work, and anyone whose business income (事業所得, jigyō shotoku, "business income") needs a tax record.¹ It covers the opening notification, the blue-form approval application, and the trade-name, bank, and invoicing preparation around those filings.

The national-tax filings below are uniform nationwide; the filing destination follows your tax domicile (納税地, nōzeichi, "tax domicile"), not a ward-specific procedure.¹² What varies locally is how residence-tax notices arrive after you file, and prefectural tax offices may need their own steps, so confirm both with your municipality and prefecture.¹ Registration alone does not authorize freelance work on every visa status, a boundary covered in the visa discussion below.

What the opening notification does and does not do

The opening notification (個人事業の開業・廃業等届出書, kojin jigyō no kaigyō haigyō tō todokedesho, "sole-proprietor opening and closure notification") tells the tax system that your business exists.¹ Filing it opens your tax record; no approval letter follows, and none is needed before you start work.

It opens your tax record, not a business license

No license or permit is issued when you file. The form records the start of your business, the location of any business office, and later changes such as an added, moved, or closed office, or closure of the business itself.¹ Keep a copy of the filed form with its receipt stamp; it is your proof of filing if a client or agency ever asks when you started.

Registration alone does not authorize freelance work on every visa

Filing with the tax office and holding permission to freelance are two different questions. This article answers only the tax-filing half and asserts no visa rule. Readers on an Engineer, Humanities, or International Services status should confirm their position against Engineer/Humanities/International Services Visa or with an immigration lawyer or gyoseishoshi before taking client work.

Filing the opening notification

File the opening notification first; everything else in this article keys off its date. The sequence below shows how the two filings and the preparation steps fit together.¹²

Where and how to file

File with the tax office (税務署, zeimusho, "tax office") that has jurisdiction over your tax domicile, in person, by mail, or through e-Tax.¹⁴ For most residents the tax domicile is the address on their residence record.¹ The NTA procedure page provides the official form as a downloadable PDF and supports creating and submitting it through the e-Tax software.⁴

Item	Detail	Source
Opening notification form	個人事業の開業・廃業等届出書, downloadable from the NTA procedure page	4
Identity check for paper filing	Enter your individual number on the form and present or attach identity-verification documents	4
Identity check for e-Tax filing	Electronic verification; no separate document display or copies needed	4

Bring your My Number Card if you file in person or on paper; it covers both the number entry and the identity check.⁴ For e-Tax filing, have the card ready for electronic identity verification instead.⁴

When to file

NTA Tax Answer No. 2090 currently states the deadline as the filing deadline (確定申告期限, kakutei shinkoku kigen, "final-return filing deadline") of the year containing the date you started business.¹ Older guides describe a 1-month deadline instead, and that shorter guidance still circulates widely.

Older guides say 1 month; the NTA page states the filing deadline

Treat the NTA page as operative and the 1-month version as outdated guidance that still circulates.¹ Either way, file within the first month: early filing starts your paper trail immediately and keeps the blue-form 2-month clock from becoming the binding constraint.

Applying for blue-form approval

Blue-form filing (青色申告, aoiro shinkoku, "blue-form return") is the preferential track: approved filers who keep proper books earn the special deduction (青色申告特別控除, aoiro shinkoku tokubetsu kōjo, "blue-form special deduction") described below.²³ Approval requires the advance application (青色申告承認申請書, aoiro shinkoku shōnin shinseisho, "blue-form approval application") filed with the same tax office that received your opening notification.²

Application deadlines

The standard deadline is March 15 of the year for which blue-form filing is sought.² Businesses that newly start on or after January 16 of that year file within 2 months of the start date instead.²

Situation	Deadline	Source
Continuing business	March 15 of the filing year	2
Business newly started January 16 or later	Within 2 months of the start date	2
Succession by inheritance from a non-blue filer, taken over January 16 or later	Within 2 months of succession	2

File both forms in one tax-office visit

The opening notification and the blue-form application go to the same office and the same counter.¹² Filing both on day one removes the deadline risk for the entire first year.

The 650K, 550K, and 100K deduction tiers

The deduction rewards bookkeeping effort in three tiers.³ All three require approved blue-form status; the tiers below assume the return itself is filed by the March 15 deadline with the required statements attached, including for refund-only filers.²³

Tier	Cap	Core conditions	Source
Full double-entry plus e-filing or qualifying e-books	650,000 JPY	Double-entry books with balance sheet and profit-and-loss statement, plus e-Tax filing or qualifying electronic journals and ledgers	3
Full double-entry, paper filing	550,000 JPY	Double-entry books with statements attached, filed by the deadline	3
Other approved blue-form filers	100,000 JPY	Blue approval without the bookkeeping tiers above	3

Where total qualifying income falls below the cap, the deduction is limited to that total, computed before any loss offset.³ Since 2024, the electronic-books route additionally requires the journals and ledgers to meet the high-quality e-book standard with a notification stating so; continuing filers who already qualified need not re-file that notification.³ Start double-entry records from day one even before approval arrives; reconstructing a year of books at filing time is the most common way first-year filers lose the top tier.

What happens if you miss the window

Without an approved application, you file that year on the white track with no special deduction.² There is no retroactive approval path on the NTA pages. File the application for the following year by the next March 15 deadline and keep books in the meantime, so year two qualifies.²

Trade name, bank account, and invoicing preparation

The two tax filings take one visit; the preparation below makes that visit count. None of it requires a separate government application.

Entering a trade name on the form

You may enter a trade name (屋号, yagō, "trade name") on the opening notification.⁴ This is optional: a blank field is accepted, and entering a name does not register a company or reserve the name against other users. Pick something you can print on invoices and receive bank transfers under, then use it consistently.

Preparing a bank account and your My Number Card

Arrange a yen account for receiving client payments before you send your first invoice, so no payment waits on onboarding checks. The account-opening rules themselves are outside this article; Bank Account in Japan for Foreigners: The Six-Month Rule and Japan Post Bank for Foreigners: Opening a Yucho Account cover them in full. Keep your My Number Card accessible throughout: it serves for e-Tax identity verification and for the number entry on paper forms.⁴

Invoice registration is a separate step

Registering as a qualified invoice issuer (適格請求書発行事業者, tekikaku seikyūsho hakkō jigyōsha, "qualified invoice issuer") is a separate application from the opening notification.¹ Whether to register, and how the decision interacts with the consumption-tax exemption for small businesses, is a separate question this article does not answer.

After filing: residence tax and your first tax return

Filing at the tax office settles your national-tax record. Two threads continue after that: municipal and prefectural taxes, and your first annual return.

Residence tax follows from your return

Your tax-office filing does not automatically satisfy every subnational step. NTA notes that prefectural tax offices, pension offices, and labor standards inspection offices may each require their own filings, so confirm each separately rather than assuming one filing covers all.¹ In particular, ask your prefectural tax office whether individual enterprise-tax steps apply to your line of work, and confirm with your municipality how your residence-tax notice will arrive.

Your first final tax return

You settle business income through the annual final return (確定申告, kakutei shinkoku, "final income-tax return"); the opening notification itself computes and pays no tax.¹² The return mechanics, including the blue-versus-white filing choice your approval unlocked, belong to the taxes-pension return guide and are not re-derived here.

Good to know

File within the first month even though NTA states a later deadline

The NTA page gives you until the filing deadline of the starting year, but waiting gains nothing and risks the blue-form window.¹² Filing in the first month aligns both clocks at once.

A missed blue-form deadline costs a full year of the deduction

Approval is prospective only: the March 15 and 2-month windows admit no late entry for the current year.² Calendar the deadline for year two the day you realize year one is lost.

Paper filing without e-Tax caps the deduction at 550K

The 650,000 JPY tier requires e-Tax filing or qualifying electronic books on top of double-entry records.³ A paper filer with perfect books still stops at 550,000 JPY, so set up e-Tax before the first return, not after.

Closing the business needs its own notification

The same form covers closure (廃止, haiji, "closure") as well as opening.¹ Stopping work without filing leaves the tax record open and the notices coming. File the closure notification when the business ends, not months later.

Prefectural offices and social insurance sit outside this filing

The tax-office visit does not enroll you in pension or health insurance and does not settle prefectural business tax.¹ Each of those runs on its own track with its own office; budget a separate visit or application for each.

See also

• Blue-Form vs. White-Form Tax Returns
• Can You Freelance on Your Visa?
• Health Insurance and Pension for Freelancers
• Client-Side Withholding (Gensen Choshu)
• Invoicing and the Qualified Invoice (Inbosu) System
• The Freelance-vs-Employee Test

References

Footnotes

1. 国税庁 (National Tax Agency). 「No.2090 新たに事業を始めたときの届出など」. Tax Answer, law version as of 2026-01-01. https://www.nta.go.jp/taxes/shiraberu/taxanswer/shotoku/2090.htm ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸

2. 国税庁 (National Tax Agency). 「No.2070 青色申告制度」. Tax Answer, law version as of 2025-04-01. https://www.nta.go.jp/taxes/shiraberu/taxanswer/shotoku/2070.htm ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷

3. 国税庁 (National Tax Agency). 「No.2072 青色申告特別控除」. Tax Answer, law version as of 2025-04-01. https://www.nta.go.jp/taxes/shiraberu/taxanswer/shotoku/2072.htm ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

4. 国税庁 (National Tax Agency). 「A1-5 個人事業の開業・廃業等届出」. Tax procedure guide (form download, e-Tax filing, My Number handling, office hours). https://www.nta.go.jp/taxes/tetsuzuki/shinsei/annai/shinkoku/annai/04.htm ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹