japan social health insurance, national health insurance
So next up on the agenda are 2 big and scary things for me, taxes and health insurance. The latter being a necessary evil, and the former just being evil.
I registered my new address at city hall yesterday evening after work. We were there quite late, and then they told us to pick up paperwork for national health insurance. From wikipedia I learned that there are two types of health insurance in Japan: Kenkō-Hoken 健康保険 ([social] health insurance) and Kokumin-Kenkō-Hoken 国民健康保険 (national health insurance).
Essentially it is a compulsory system no different than a tax, and since I am a contract worker I fall under the national health insurance. National Health Insurance will require that I pay 100% of the premium, plus 30% of every medical visit, hospitalization, and perscription. The cost for the monthly premium is very low the first year, and then in the second year they base the cost on your previous year’s tax bracket (income). The cap is supposedly 60000 yen per month which is about 600.00$. That is quite a bit in my opinion. In the States I had a Health Savings account with a really high deductible and payments of only 75$ a month, so this is much different.
Right now I dont know what I will pay in, because I dont know what the % is. I am silently fearing the worst 
As far as taxes go, I have to pay them - not something I want to mess around with. This year I arrived in Japan during the middle of Jan, so by US tax code it appears that I will have to pay US taxes because I was not in Japan 100% of this tax year. Likewise I may also have to pay Japanese taxes b/c I was here as a registered resident for most of the year. My suspicion, however, is that due to the nature of the way I work and get payed that one or the other may be significantly reduced or ignored.
May 14th, 2009 at 8:09 am
Tax, tax and more tax. I think the world runs on tax, for everything you do is taxed.
May 15th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
yes indeed Roy… yes indeed :’(