The common advice is to negotiate prices excl tax, and that advice has been there for quite a while. Even before the new invoice system you could have your revenue taxed if it exceeds a certain amount (10mil JPY) for a certain amount of years.

What is surprising to me is how low the business side skills of most freelancers are. E.g., they don’t have a grasp of double entry bookkeeping, despite doing the blue tax declaration (青色申告). And as soon as there is a complicated payable or receivable scenario, the simple data entry freee and the like provide breaks down.

In my opinion the general skill level is pretty low. To me it is no wonder that the tax agency organizes tax lawyer led study groups, we need more of that.

Again, no surprise that people freak out over this system, but it‘s been years in the making. And the fact that sole entrepreneurs have been able to “pocket in“ the VAT so to say has always felt like a massive ripoff to me. This is especially so because the tax burden is even higher for me as a corporation here.

Being from Germany, having proper rules for VAT deduction appears as the most normal thing to me.