Business Manager Visa, as the name suggests, allows foreigners to manage a company or take administrative positions in an office setting in Japan.
Some people obtain this visa to establish their own company and start their own business in Japan. In order to apply for a Business Manager visa with a new business, you must establish your company before applying for your visa. The important point is establishing a company is one process and applying for the visa is a separate process. You may think that as long as you establish a company with the minimum capital of five million Japanese yen you can obtain a Business Manager visa, but this is wrong.
Indeed the size of your business must meet minimum size criteria. Establishing a company either with the capital of five million Japanese yen or hiring more than two full-time employee who residence in Japan is a minimum requirement. The meaning of “full-time employee who residence in Japan” is a Japanese national, foreign nationals with permanent residence status, Spouse of Japanese, or Spouse of permanent residence holder.
Here are three important requirements at least you must meet other than scale of your business, in order to apply for Business Manager visa to start your own business in Japan.
apply for Business Manager visa to start your own business in Japan.
1. Must secure an office under company name
In order to apply for a Business Manager visa, you must secure an office under the company name and in the leasing contract the “purpose of use” of the property must be written as “business use”. In addition, if you run a service industry business such as a restaurant, food sales, or massage parlor, you must secure a dedicated office space other than a store space. Separating a store space by partitions and create a temporary office space is not acceptable. It must be a completely separate office space.
In the case where you sign a leasing contract before establishing your company, you may sign it under your name but must make sure with the owner that it can be changed to company name once you establish your company.
2. Method of raising money
In the case where you are not able to arrange all of the company’s capital of five million yen by yourself, you may borrow from your friends, family, business partner or bank. In this case at the time of applying for your Business Manager visa with Immigration you must clearly explain how you raise the money.
If your borrow from others you must submit a loan agreement, repayment schedule, record of remittance and sometimes immigration may ask to submit a Taxation certificate of those whom you borrowed money from.
The reason immigration asks to submit the certificate is to check if there is any violation or not. For example if the person from whom you borrowed money is staying in Japan with a student visa they are not suppose to engage in any working activities unless she/he submits an application, and even if she/he submits the application they are only allowed to engage in working activities for 28 hours per week. So if the certificate is showing large amounts of money, Immigration may be suspicious that she/he might work more than 28 hours per week. If they find out this kind of violation your application of Business Visa will be denied.
3. You must submit an in-depth business plan
In order to prove stability of your new business you must submit an in-depth business plan to Immigration. This must be a realistic and specific one including income and expenditure plan.
If you are going to run a consulting business, you must submit a list of prospective clients list and need to submit an agreement to prove that they will sign a consulting service contract with your company once you establish a company. If you do no have any prospective client or are not able to submit any agreement your application of Business Visa will be denied.
As you can see from the above, establishing your company is and applying for the visa are completely separate. Please consult with an expert BEFORE establishing a company.
