representative office– tag –

Every comparison of Japan's three entry forms is built from the same seven columns: cost, timeline, governance, liability, tax, banking, visas. None of them has a column for the people you are going to hire. That column is the one that changes what the choice actually costs, because a representative office is treated as a sole proprietorship for health and pension insurance while a branch is treated as a corporation.

One word is doing three jobs. Whether you can sign a contract in Japan, whether you have a taxable presence there, and whether Japanese administration has anything to attach your staff to are separate questions, and only the first one is settled by registering a company. This is what JETRO’s guidance says about each, and where it stops giving answers.