For overseas companies
Japanese Tax & Accounting (handled in English)
ATHENA Tax Corporation looks after the books,
the filings and the head-office reporting of
foreign-owned subsidiaries and branches in Japan.
Monthly reporting, tax advice and meetings are all available in English, with cloud accounting in place from the first month. Returns filed with the Japanese tax authorities have to be prepared in Japanese — the reasoning behind them does not.
An English-speaking team, a freee certified advisor at 5 stars (the highest rank), and Big4 international tax experience. Based in Fukuoka, working with clients across Japan and with head offices abroad.
problem
If any of this sounds familiar,
we can help
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We are planning to enter Japan, but cannot tell whether a subsidiary or a branch is the better structure.
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We have set up a Japanese entity, but nobody on the team understands Japanese accounting and tax rules.
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Our parent company needs reporting in English, aligned with its own accounting system and chart of accounts.
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We have no Japanese-speaking staff, so working with a Japanese-only tax accountant is difficult.
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We cannot judge withholding tax or tax treaty treatment on cross-border payments.
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Japanese consumption tax, including the invoice system, is too complex to handle in-house.
strength
A Japanese tax firm your head
office can actually talk to
freee certified advisor 5 stars (the highest rank) An English-speaking team of accountants for foreign-owned companies in Japan.
A Fukuoka tax corporation,
Big4 trained
We are a tax corporation based in Fukuoka, Japan, led by Yuka Ikeda — a certified public accountant and certified tax accountant who trained at KPMG (AZSA & Co.) before founding her own practice in 2013. Most of our clients are small and mid-sized companies; a growing number of them are the Japanese arms of businesses headquartered elsewhere.
More than
a filing service
What those companies usually need is not only a filing service. They need someone who can run the monthly numbers under Japanese rules, explain the result to a finance team that has never seen a Japanese ledger, and flag a withholding or PE problem before it becomes an assessment. That is the work we take on.
merit
Three reasons overseas
companies stay with us
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Reason01
Your head office talks to us directly, in English
Monthly reporting, tax advice and meetings are all available in English, so an overseas parent with no staff on the ground in Japan still gets the same visibility as a local one.
Filings submitted to the Japanese tax authorities have to be prepared in Japanese, but the explanations, summaries and reports you receive are in English. -
Reason02
Cloud accounting (freee) built around cross-border operations
As a freee certified advisor with 5 stars — the highest rank — we design the accounting function of your Japanese subsidiary or branch on a cloud-first basis.
Foreign-currency transactions, intercompany transactions with the parent, and source documents in English are all part of the design, so the monthly close under Japanese GAAP stays fast. -
Reason03
International tax expertise led by a Big4 alumna
Our representative began her career at KPMG (AZSA & Co.). Withholding tax, tax treaties, permanent establishment risk, transfer pricing and CFC rules are handled end to end — from identifying the exposure to preparing the schedules attached to the return.
Where a case calls for it, we bring in our network of partner specialists.
Looking for a tax accountant in Japan
who works in English?
Tell us where your business stands — preparing to enter Japan,
just arrived, or already running.
We will set out what we would take on and what it would cost.
service
What we take off your plate
Bookkeeping and filings under Japanese rules,
reporting your head office can read,
and the cross-border questions that come with running an entity in Japan.
The scope below is the starting point; we shape it around the phase your Japanese operation is in.
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Bookkeeping and monthly closing under Japanese GAAP
- Monthly journal entries and review, in line with Japanese accounting standards and tax categories
- Foreign-currency and intercompany transactions
- Trial balance and monthly reporting package (Japanese, English, or both)
- Alignment with your parent company’s accounting system and chart of accounts
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Corporate, local and consumption tax returns
- Interim and annual returns for corporate tax, local taxes and consumption tax
- Special items such as foreign tax credits, thin capitalisation and earnings stripping rules
- Amended returns and requests for correction
- Preparation and filing of notifications to the tax office and local tax authorities
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Withholding tax and tax treaty support
- Assessment of withholding obligations on payments to non-residents and foreign corporations
- Preparation and filing of tax treaty application forms
- Classification of royalties, dividends, interest and service fees
- Review of permanent establishment (PE) exposure
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Reporting to your head office
- Monthly, quarterly and annual reporting packages in English
- Reconciliation of differences between your home-country standards and Japanese GAAP
- Video calls directly with your head office finance team
- Mapping support for your group reporting format
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Ongoing tax advisory, by chat and online
- Continuous advice on Japanese tax and accounting rules
- Support on the invoice system and consumption tax classification
- Preventive work on grey areas: framing the issue and proposing a position
- Attendance at tax audits and negotiation with the tax office
Options
Back office, payroll and system implementation —
added when you need them,
so you can run a Japanese entity without hiring an accountant locally.
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freee implementation support (available in English)
freee accounting and freee HR can be implemented separately or together, matched to the phase your Japanese operation is in.
■ freee accounting — from JPY 100,000 (excl. tax)
Initial setup (chart of accounts, departments, tax categories), data migration from your existing software or head-office system, bank and card integration design, and training for both your Japanese staff and your parent company.
■ freee HR — from JPY 50,000 (excl. tax)
Initial setup (employees, pay structure, attendance, social insurance), data migration, workflow design, and integration with freee accounting. -
Year-end adjustment, legal payment summaries and depreciable asset tax returns
The year-end filing cycle in Japan is administratively heavy. We take on the deadlines and the paperwork, which matters most when you have few or no Japanese-speaking staff.
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Payroll, including freee HR operation
Payroll and the labour administration around it, including payroll and year-end adjustment for expatriate staff.
Social insurance procedures and other work reserved for licensed labour consultants are delivered together with our partner sharoshi (certified social insurance and labour consultants). -
Invoicing, receivables and payment BPO
Issuing invoices, matching receipts against receivables, and preparing and approving bank transfers — the whole monthly back-office cycle.
Linked to freee Invoice and freee accounting, so the flow from payment to journal entry runs without an accounting hire in Japan.
Option fees depend on scope. Ask us and we will quote.
price
How our fees are set
Retainer fees follow the annual-revenue tiers published on our Japanese fee page.
For foreign-owned companies we also quote individually, based on scope — whether bookkeeping is included, whether you need English reporting, and how many cross-border items the return carries.
- All amounts Quoted excluding Japanese consumption tax
- freee implementation Accounting from JPY 100,000 / HR from JPY 50,000
- Engagement period One year as a rule. Spot work on a single issue is possible
Scope, fee and terms are explained in full before anything is signed. The tier table is on our 料金ページ (fee page, in Japanese).
flow
From first contact to your first filing
Step.01
Inquiry
Step.02
Meeting and fact-finding
Step.03
Quotation
Step.04
Engagement
Step.05
Workflow design
Step.06
Monthly operation starts
Step.07
Tax filing
company
Company profile
- Legal name
- ATHENA Tax Corporation (アテナ税理士法人)
- Representative
- Yuka Ikeda, Certified Public Accountant and Certified Tax Accountant
- Head office
- 2F Shin-Nihon Building, 2-4-22 Daimyo, Chuo-ku, Fukuoka 810-0041, Japan
- info@athena-tax.jp
- Established
- May 1, 2024
- Corporate number
- 2290005019402
- Team
- 10 (as of April 1, 2026)
- Capital
- JPY 10,000,000
- Services
- Tax agency services, preparation of tax documents, and tax consultation
- Languages
- Japanese, English
message
To finance teams outside Japan
FAQ
Questions we are asked most
Yes. Pre-entry consultation is part of what we do — comparing the available structures (representative office, branch, subsidiary), setting out where each one lands for tax purposes, and covering the notifications and operating design you will need once the entity exists. We also work with foreign corporations that have no presence in Japan at all but still have to file for specific transactions. Tell us where you are and we will take it from there.
Monthly reporting, tax advice and meetings (video calls) are all available in English. Documents submitted to the tax office — returns and notifications — must be prepared in Japanese under Japanese law, but you receive the summary and the reasoning in English. We can also deal with your head office finance team directly.
Accounting and tax filing in Japan are prepared under Japanese GAAP. For head-office reporting we reconcile the differences and support the mapping to your group format. Delivering the monthly data in the structure your parent’s system expects is something we build into the workflow design at the start.
Yes. Whether withholding applies to a cross-border payment, preparing and filing the tax treaty application forms, and framing PE and CFC issues are all handled by a team with international tax experience. On the harder positions we bring in our partner specialists and propose an approach that keeps the exposure down.
One year as a rule. We match the plan to where your business stands — preparing to enter Japan, just arrived, or running — and to the scope you need. Spot engagements on a single issue are also possible. Before you sign, we walk you through the scope, the fee and the terms in plain language.
Looking for a tax accountant in Japan
who works in English?
Tell us where your business stands — preparing to enter Japan,
just arrived, or already running.
We will set out what we would take on and what it would cost.