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I was pleasantly surprised to see this letter on my desk when I arrived home this evening:

Enclosed was my pension handbook that I had when I was in Japan and a “Notice of the Lump-sum Withdrawal Payment (Remittance)”. The icing on the cake was when I read the contents and noticed that the refund was five times larger than what I was expecting it to be, even after deduction of 20% income tax. Now I don’t feel so bad as when I left Japan and I was hit with one years worth of Resident’s tax in my last month – that left me feeling poor. Very poor.

The amount refunded is higher than expected because it appears I was contributing to an Employees’ Pension rather than the National Pension. I’m pretty sure I filled in the forms wrong (to claim the lump-sum), considering it was mostly Japanese and the English equivalent was pretty dire. At least the Japanese Pension agency knew what to do with it and has given me, what I would say, a fair refund of the contributions I had been making into a pension system I would probably never be able to receive any benefits from.

I did apply for this all the way back in July 2009 so it’s taken 6 months to process but I have a feeling that they waited until the new calendar year for the (resident) taxes to sort themselves out and to confirm my (non) residency status. The system is quite mysterious if you don’t understand Japanese.

For those in a similar situation, you should check if there is some agreement between Japan and your home country before applying for the lump-sum withdrawal. For example, your home country may allow those contributions you made in Japan to count towards your pension back home. As far as I know, the UK doesn’t have this agreement yet. The only agreement between UK and Japan is that I don’t need to be liable to taxes/national insurance contributions to both systems at the same time.

Now I just hope I gave them my correct bank details!