This autistic girl went to Japan, and you won’t believe what happened next: she set up a Japanese corporation, paid a fortune to accountants, lawyers and the tax office, and then watched her bank account hit rock bottom.

It was supposed to be a big success story, of course. When I moved to Japan, I actually had a decent amount of money, even after that whole pandemic and the fourteen months I spent semi-homeless because the borders were closed. I mean, the one upside to the pandemic was that I didn’t have anything better to do anyway, so I went ahead and launched an English and a German book. The English one did especially well, partly thanks to the pandemic—everyone was stuck at home reading.

I bought a tiny apartment in Japan, even before the borders reopened. It was dirt cheap, 4.2 million yen, or about 30,000 euros at the time. On top of that, I needed another 5 million yen as startup capital. (That was a legal requirement for my visa.) So I borrowed a bit from Ruud, a bit from Riemer, and just like that, I had a Japanese corporation.

The first year, money flew out of my pockets. I needed furniture, I needed lawyers, I needed establishing documents and annual reports… And with all that startup work, there wasn’t much time left to focus on my regular work. I rented a separate living space, because I was using the apartment I’d bought as an office, and I wasn’t allowed to live at the same address. (Again, because of my visa.) I wrote a book about my move to Japan, hoping it would be as successful as my first book, but it wasn’t. It did take a lot of time. I made the (also not super successful) English translation, which cost time and money, but didn’t bring in much either.

And I was lonely. The whole move was harder than expected, so I spent money on flights to the Netherlands, hotel stays, and domestic trips. For “inspiration,” and in an attempt to escape the rut of sitting at home (or at the office).

“It would help your visa renewal if you hired people,” said the visa lawyer. So I hired someone. I missed Charlotte, so I flew her over to shoot PR visuals with me. Meanwhile, my book royalties were shrinking month by month.

Every spring, after receiving my royalties from the Netherlands, a Japanese income tax bill drops on the mat. Royalties are taxed as personal income in Japan, which isn’t just fiscally disadvantageous—it also means my corporation runs at a loss on paper, while my personal income ends up higher than it needs to be.

I moved in with François, yay! But now my monthly expenses are higher than when I was still living in my tiny tenth-floor apartment. We got married (yay!), went on a honeymoon (yay, but also expensive!), and I hired Maan to take our wedding photos. That wasn’t free either, but Maan is amazing, and hey, you only get married once, so of course I wanted proper photos.

The whole time, I knew this couldn’t go on forever. Every month, I spent just a bit more than I earned. Not so much privately, but business-wise for sure. I lowered my salary, but it didn’t help. Every month I pay 44,000 yen to my accountant. Over 100,000 yen in pension and health insurance premiums—while as a sole proprietor, it would be around 16,000 yen. And filing my income tax return? This year, my accountant wanted nearly half a million yen for that. Yes, I pay him monthly, but that hardly includes anything.

In the end, I did the income tax filing myself, and later also handled the paperwork for the employee insurance (premium: 600 yen, accountant’s fee: 30,000) and the update to my social insurance contributions after changing my salary. I can’t do the corporate tax returns myself, though. They’re too complex.

Now that we’re married, I have spouse status. That instantly removed all the requirements the government had imposed on me. So now I want to dissolve the corporation and switch to a sole proprietorship. That would solve pretty much all my problems. I just had a call about it with my accountant, but unfortunately, he didn’t have great news. First of all—and I’d already expected this—it’s going to cost me thousands of euros again. Closing statements, a lawyer to handle the dissolution and liquidation… But what I didn’t see coming is that before I can shut down the whole thing, I first have to settle all debts.

Settling debts–it might sound obvious. But in my case, I mostly owe money to myself. Or well… Person-me still has to repay about 1.5 million yen (roughly 10,000 euros) to corporate-me. Here’s how that happened: At times when I didn’t have any money, mostly in the beginning, before a salary had been set, I withdrew money from the company to live on. That’s now listed in the books as a loan that person-me owes to the corporation.

Now you might think: can’t you just write that off? I mean, it’s my own money, right? But if I just erase the debt, it looks like the company paid me, and then I’d have to pay an unnecessary amount of tax on it. Or something.

So, long story short: I now have to somehow conjure up 1.5 million yen. I’ll have to deposit that into the company. Part of it will then go toward the accountants and lawyers who will handle dismantling the corporation, and whatever is left (if anything…) will eventually come back to me, as what remains of the paid-in capital after liquidation. But that could take months.

Do I think it’ll be okay? Of course. It always will. I might have to borrow some money here and there, skip a few salary payments, demand massive advances for my next book (lol), and then sometime around October, another big royalty payment should come in. Hopefully.

And yeah, of course it’s my own fault. I spent too much. Lived a bit too luxuriously. Underestimated how expensive this whole business manager adventure would be. Or maybe, deep down, I did know. But I thought, I’ll just go for it and we’ll see what happens.

And like I said, it’ll be fine. And if not, that’s fine too. But if all of you could just go buy, hype, rate, share, and like my books… That would really help.