Ever since My Number for iPhone Apple Wallet launched in 2025, I’ve been looking for a good workout opportunity. Unfortunately there haven’t been many. On the medical insurance side, the brand new Kawakita Hospital in Asagaya only has plastic card readers, ditto the dentist. I did find one clinic in front of Ogikubo station that has a smartphone reader and successfully scanned My Number Apple Wallet card when checking in for my free annual physical. It was boring…in a good way. That is to say it worked better than scanning the plastic My Number card that elderly people were using. Many of them had problems checking in and entering their passcode.
I had read good things about how easy e-Tax + My Number Apple Wallet works and decided to give it a try for submitting my 2025 tax return. I dutifully linked all the necessary e-documents, my bank account and double checked that my e-Tax account information was correct in MynaPortal app. I made a reservation at the local tax office in Suginami ward and lined up at my appointed time.
The first hurdle was, naturally, filling out a green paper form to get me in the right tax return line: smartphone, paper, etc. A older male staffer checked it and my backup paper docs (withholding tax, insurance payments) put them in a clear file with a blue mark ‘S’. “Follow the blue line”. I followed the blue line into the adjoining building with a very low plasterboard ceiling, bad florescent lighting, rows of narrow standup booths and waited to be called.
After a few minutes, a booth opened up with a young woman staffer on duty to guide me and the lady in the next booth through the smartphone My Number+e-Tax filing process. I recalled the advice my partner gave me: “there will be lots of well paid temp staff there who do most of the assisting. Act completely dumb and helpless so they do the work, that’s what they’re there for.”
Acting dumb was easy but it didn’t go well from the start. “Read the QR Code on your green application form,” she said. I did and pulled up the e-Tax browser page. From there I logged into MynaPortal with FaceID, bounced back to the e-Tax page and started the tax return. The big moment had arrived, e-Tax took me back to the MynaPortal page to link My Number information to the e-Tax return. The My Number Apple Wallet sheet pulled up for confirmation showing all the details going to e-Tax. I double clicked the side button to confirm. The screen bounced back to e-Tax where all the related fields (name, address, linked documentation) should be filled in. They were all empty. “Huh?” The staffer looked perplexed and had me do it again…and again. Nothing. After a few more attempts she suggested, “Let’s try reading the plastic My Number card instead,” but again nothing. “Let me get the technical support guy.” She meant the real full time tax office staffer. It was a long wait.
He finally came and looked on as I walked thought the failed process again. Nothing was going from the My Number system to the e-Tax system. In the end they gave up and had me manually enter all the information that should have be automatically pulled in. Manual input also tripped up on the name entry. The e-Tax system couldn’t handle middle names and would not accept anything beyond 11 characters. All I could do was manage to cram the first 4 characters of my middle name at the end of the first name space.
Then I manually entered all the numbers from the backup paper documents. I could have taken a picture but the staffer told me, “the picture data is so big it’s faster to manually input, you’ll be scrolling forever otherwise.” Everything done, she double checked my numbers and tapped the file output button to save a PDF. Finally I tapped the send button and headed for the exit. One hour to do what should have been a 5 minute job. As expected, the My Number middle name curse was responsible for nothing working. Before leaving I asked the staffer one last question: when I do this next year and run into problem who do I call for support? Is it a Digital Agency My Number support issue or a Tax agency e-Tax issue. She could answer it.
If this is how bad the My Number system is for a long term, Japanese speaking foreign resident like me, imagine the mess it is going to be for the masses of foreign workers that Japan plans to let in over the next few years. I suspect younger workers at the Digital Agency and their sub-contractors are well aware of the My Number system problems, but getting the much older higher ups and especially elderly Japanese politicians who are digitally illiterate to do anything about it is the real problem. Good luck with that because there’s a lot of work to be done to make the My Number system useable and useful. Oh, and good luck with your tax returns.