Oh yeah, I don’t pay taxes 'cause I don’t live in the US. No Japanese taxes either. It’s a dream.
Monsieur de Sade, are you working under the table and getting paid in cash? You must be, if you’re not paying Japanese taxes. I might mention for those who’ve never been to Japan that it’s relatively common for native speakers of English to do private language tutoring on this basis (illegal, but almost never caught).
For those of us who work here on a more, um, official basis, we do indeed have to pay Japanese income taxes, but they’re withheld automatically from salaries, and there’s very little tax return paperwork for the individual to do–just one piece of paper listing you name and address, etc., and your dependents if you have any. And for the Americans here, we are indeed exempt from U.S. taxes unless we make a very large amount of money (and I believe other countries have very similar laws about their citizens working abroad).
Um, millions of people in the US do not pay income tax just because they do not meet the minimum requirements but they are subject to the tax laws all the same and if they meet the conditions they woyuld have to pay (or they’d be breaking the law which, though is also done I do not recommend).
And, of course, you pay sales taxes and other taxes. But there is a way. . .
Some years ago I dated a woman who worked for a foreign embassy in Washington DC and she did have a card issued by the State Department exempting her from all taxes, state and federal. I loved that. We would go anywhere and she would sweetly say to the cashier “No taxes. please” and the cashier, often, never having heard of tax exempt status, would often be totally confused and sometimes even say “You think you have a choice?” Then the magic card would be produced and a confused cashier would call a supervisor, and time would go by and people in line would begin to sigh and if it was a small purchase we would ask ourselves if it was worth the hassle… so for most small purchases we just paid the tax.
But I remember a small store in MDs Eastern Shore. The woman, when presented with the card, raised a stink about “people not paying their share of taxes” and she went on and on and was extremely hostile. We explained to her that American diplomats are exempt from paying taxes in other countries and this is a reciprocity type of thing but that made her tirade even worse saying they too should pay taxes… She was really and genuinely pissed that someone could be exempt from paying taxes. We left the store and had not taken ten steps outside when we discovered the product we bought was defective… we turned around and tried to exchange it but she said “Sorry, we’ve closed, you have to return tomorrow” and indeed that was it. Maybe she could not charge these furriners sales tax but, by golly, she was oing to make them miserable as much as she could. haha, I imagine she is still pissed off at something in Easton Md. Some people enjoy being pissed and the more unhappy they are, the more they enjoy it.