Reviewing of the Permanent Residence application by Japan Immigration bureau has become more strict since 2019 July. Here are three common cases where your permanent residence application will most likely be denied.
1. Your income is too low
Even though there is no any official criteria for the annual income that you need to meet in order to apply for status of permanent residence, ideally your annual salary should be higher than ￥3,000,000 if you are single and not supporting any family member. If you are supporting family members your annual salary should have roughly an additional￥700,000 per dependent.Submitting a Taxation certificate for the past three to five years is mandatory for Permeant Residence application. By submitting this certificate, immigration can grasp your annual income.
As an example, lets look at the annual income in a Taxation certificate for a single person with no dependents over the past 5 years and see whether or not this application would be accepted.
Fiscal year 2020/￥3,200,000
Fiscal year 2019/￥3,200,000
Fiscal year 2018/￥3,000,000
Fiscal year 2017/￥3,000,000
Fiscal year 2016/￥2,800,000
In this example I think the application has a high possibility of being denied. The salary for the past 4 years is meeting the criteria but the income of Fiscal year 2016 is below￥3,000,000, so immigration may not consider this income stable. If you were in this situation I would advise you to try and keep your income above ￥3,000,000 for the next year and apply for your PR once you obtain the newest Taxation certificate. Every year the newest certificate will be ready in month of June. For example if you are waiting for a certificate of finical year of 2021 (showing your income of 2020 1st Jan to 31st Dec), it will be ready in June 2021.
2. Not paying into Public pension and Public medical insurance on time
For your Permanent Residence application, Japan immigration will strictly check whether you have paid into the Public pension and paid required fees for Public medical insurance for the past 2 years without any delay. Not just for an apilicant but they will check whether your famili members who are living in Japan and part of the same household have paid into thoese fees without any delay.
3. You are out of Japan more than a total of 60 days in a year
In the case where you are out of Japan more than 60 days in total throughout a year, Japan Immigration might think that you are not settling in and establishing your livelihood in Japan. Immigration has access to your flight records in and out of Japan so it is possible for them to check your travel history and how much time you spend actually in Japan. However by submitting an additional explanation letter to Immigration your application might be accepted. For example, if you have many business trips throughout the year you may ask your company to write a letter to explain what kind of tasks you have been assigned and why you need to go on long/frequent business trips. If you need to go back to your home country because a family member is sick and you need to care them you may submit a letter from the doctor to justify your travel.
