The renewal document list grew in 2025. If you were last in front of Immigration two or three years ago, expect to hand over more than you did then, and expect more of it to prove that your business actually ran rather than simply existed.
This is the full list, sorted by what you submit and set out in the order you will actually want to gather it. For why each item matters and how a renewal is judged, see our [main renewal guide (link pending publication)]. First-time applicants should start with the Business Manager Visa pillar guide instead, since the first application asks for different things.
A note before the list. This reflects the current Immigration Services Agency guidance for the 経営・管理 (Business Manager) status. Immigration decides each renewal on the whole record, so no single document on this list guarantees approval. Confirm your own case with a qualified professional.
What documents do you need to renew your Business Manager Visa?
First, find your company category
Immigration sorts the required documents by organization category, numbered 1 to 4. Categories 1 and 2 cover listed companies and larger organizations that meet a withholding-tax threshold, and they submit very little. Categories 3 and 4 cover smaller companies, which is where almost every foreign founder sits, and they submit the full list.
This checklist is written for Categories 3 and 4. If you are not sure which category your company falls in, confirm it against the Immigration Services Agency’s Business Manager page or ask your adviser before you assume this list applies to you.
Your personal and status documents
- Application for extension of period of stay, with one photograph attached
- Your passport and residence card (在留カード), presented at the counter rather than submitted
- Your personal resident-tax certificate and tax-payment certificate (住民税の課税証明書・納税証明書) showing income and that tax was paid
You can file this application from three months before your current period of stay expires. A timely application keeps your residence card valid while Immigration reviews it, so filing before the expiry date protects your status even if the decision is slow. There is a revenue-stamp fee on approval. See the extension procedure page for the current fee and filing details.
Your company documents
- Certificate of registered company matters (登記事項証明書), issued recently
- The most recent fiscal year’s financial statements (決算文書), including the profit-and-loss statement and balance sheet
- The company’s tax and withholding records, including the statutory payment-record summary (法定調書合計表) where it applies
- Proof that corporate taxes and enterprise taxes have been paid
- Evidence of a real office (lease or equivalent), since a combined home-and-office arrangement is no longer accepted as a general route
The 2025 additions (the part most people miss)
These are the items that catch existing holders off guard, because they were not part of a routine renewal a few years ago.
- A written statement of your business-management activities during your most recent period of stay
- Proof of at least one full-time employee: the labor contract and evidence of social-insurance enrolment and wages
- Evidence for the Japanese-language requirement, met by you or by a qualifying employee, shown with a test result or equivalent
- Documents substantiating your capital position and its source
- A business plan, prepared to the current standard, that reads consistently with your filings
- The declaration form concerning the representative (代表者に関する申告書), where your category calls for it
For the employee, tax, and office items, our guides on hiring through an Employer of Record and Japanese taxes for new businesses cover the underlying work.
How recent do these documents need to be?
Freshness matters as much as the document itself. As a general guide, and worth confirming for your case:
- Financial statements should cover your most recent closed fiscal year.
- Tax and resident-tax certificates should be the latest available, showing that tax was actually paid.
- The certificate of registered company matters is usually expected to have been issued within about three months.
- Employee and social-insurance evidence should reflect current, ongoing enrolment, not a contract that has since lapsed.
If your most recent filings are messy or late, that is a problem to fix before you file, not a document to gather.
What’s different from the documents you filed the first time?
The short version: your first application asked you to show a credible plan to start a business. A renewal asks you to show that the business ran, paid its taxes, and can keep going. That is why the heavier items now sit on the company side, the tax side, and the new business-activity statement, rather than on projections.
We do not re-teach the first application here. If you need the ground-level version of any requirement, the Business Manager Visa pillar guide has it.
In what order should you gather these?
Work from the slow items to the quick ones, because the slow ones cannot be produced at the last minute.
- Start months ahead with the employee and capital evidence. A labor contract, payroll history, and social-insurance records build up over time, and capital substantiation often means tracking down older paperwork.
- Next, the language evidence and the business plan. A test result takes scheduling, and a plan that has to match your filings takes a careful read against your own numbers.
- Then the company and tax documents. Financial statements, the registration certificate, and tax certificates are mostly a matter of requesting and printing, though the tax certificates depend on your filings being clean.
- Last, the quick personal items. The application form, photograph, passport, and residence card come together in an afternoon.
If any of the slow items is missing when you start, treat that as the real deadline, not your visa expiry date.
Which document mistakes delay or sink a renewal?
Most document problems fall into a handful of patterns.
- A thin or vague business-activity statement that reads as an afterthought rather than a record of what you did
- No documented full-time employee, or a contract without matching social-insurance and wage evidence
- Financial statements or tax certificates that show a business too small or too lightly taxed to look genuinely active
- A business plan that contradicts your own financial statements
- Capital you cannot fully substantiate on paper
- Tax or social-insurance gaps left unexplained
[Optional, add when supplied: one real, anonymized example from SmartStart of a document mistake that delayed or sank a renewal. Delete this line before publishing if no example is used.]
For the fuller picture of why renewals are refused, see our guide on the reasons a Business Manager Visa is rejected. A dedicated piece on [why renewals are being rejected right now (link pending publication)] goes deeper on current cases.
Before you file
A renewal is only as strong as the evidence behind it, and most of that evidence takes months to assemble. If you want a second set of eyes on your list before your date comes up, talk to us for a renewal-readiness check.
This guide is general information, not legal advice, and is pending review by a suitably qualified immigration professional. Document requirements depend on your company category and can change, so confirm the current list on the Immigration Services Agency pages linked above before you rely on it.
