Frank
2001-04-01, 09:12 PM
Hello everybody!
Who has some information about the pension system in Japan, better how or whether I can get my money back, which I forced to pay every month without living in Japan forever.
I hear you need to pay 20 year to be able to claim some pension money, but what happend if I do not work for 20 years in Japan????
Everything paid for nothing???
Please help me out.
Frank
Anonymous
2001-04-04, 11:58 AM
I heard if you work in the JET program you are forced to pay such a tax. Upon returning to your home country you can get the money back by probably going to the Japanese Embassy.
Anonymous
2001-04-07, 07:42 AM
I used to be a JET and I had to pay the pension contributions every month. I am still in Japan, so I haven't tried this yet, but this is the advice our Board of Education gave us.
You can only apply for the refund after you leave Japan, but you can collect the form you need while you are still here. You can collect one from the local pension office - I think it may be in the city hall.
They will not send the refund abroad, so you have to find a Japanese person you can trust to forward you the money and who doesn't mind acting as your agent.
Unfortunately you don't get all your contributions back. From what I can remember, if you have paid all the contributions for 12 months in one year, you can get 80% back. (I stress that this might not be accurate - I'm writing from memory!) What is certain, though, is that if you miss one of the payments in one year, or otherwise don't pay the full amount of contributions for one year, the percentage you can claim back drops considerably.
Good luck!!