Profile

Takashi Yamaguchi

Passed the exam for Japanese Certified Public Tax Accountant (a.k.a “Zeirishi” in Japanese)  in 1996.
Since then, I had been working as an in-house tax advisor in multinational firms.
In 2018, I started new career as a freelancer based in Kanda Ogawamachi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo.

A country boy

Born in Miyazaki prefecture in 1965 then grew up there until graduation from a local high school except one-year relocation accompanied with my father transferred to Kagoshima (next prefecture to Miyazaki)  for his business. 

A new grads

Left Miyazaki to attend a university in Tokyo.
In 1988, received a bachelor of commerce degree from the university and joined a major leasing company in Tokyo.
Assigned to company controllers group and engaged in consolidated financial statements and annual report under the Japanese Financial Instruments and Exchange Act (alike Form 10-K required by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission).

Be a tax professional

In 1994, joined one of the big-four accounting firms.
Passed the last subject of the JCPTA exam in 1996.
As a junior accountant, engaged in bookkeeping, preparation of financial statements, payroll and social insurance taxes, preparation of tax returns for small-mid size corporate clients.
Then, as a senior accountant, assigned to financial industry group and was in charge of tax compliance and advisory for foreign financial institutions.
Registered and licensed as a JCPTA in 1997.

In the foreign financial firms

In 1997, joined a foreign financial institution in Tokyo.
In its Tax Department, engaged in the firm’s corporate income tax return preparation, reporting to its U.S. parent company, coordination for setting transfer pricing polices.
Handled tax inquiries from both onshore and offshore colleagues as long as it could constitute tax implication in Japan.

In 2015, moved to another foreign financial institution in Tokyo and engaged in similar functions to the former institution.

A force behind the scenes

Although each firm I worked for developed large and advanced internal EDP system they faced some difficulties to catch up with changes of accounting and tax rules increasingly being complicated year by year.
It was because that limited IT resources were primarily allocated to profit centers not back-office such as Finance and Tax.
Consequently, we had to compile and compute necessary data by ourselves by off-line manual work while we were on the waiting list.
Even large multinational financial institutions still needed workforce for such groundwork.
I was one of them. Requested raw data to IT and Finance, downloaded them to spreadsheet then run massive numbers of calculation on my desktop PC.
Such experience familiarized me with data processing using Excel spreadsheet. 

Countless days with auditors

Experienced tax audit many times.
Because of the tax classification as a “large corporation”, all the firms I worked for had gone through tax audit conducted by Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau.
Dealing with TRTB, known for intensive and stringent audit in terms of number of auditors and duration compared to audit by local tax offices, was tough experience.
However it was also meaningful experience as I was able to understand their perception on hot tax issues through discussion with them.

Talking tax in English

Nearly 20-year working experience at foreign firms makes me bilingual (English-Japanese) in business conversation.    

With you

I believe I can contribute to your tax compliance and improve your business operation with my experience. 

I am looking forward to doing business with you.