I'm not familiar with the policies of visas for Japan or China. If you wanted to come to The United States, I might be more helpful. That's because I know about links like this... http://www.uscis.gov/eb-5-investor
So you are asking if you can get a visa to go to Japan or China? It all depends, if you are investing a company in China or Japan then you need to apply for a business working visa, but still, all types of Japan and China visas are fairly easy. Cause we are a team that's based in China and i have a couple of friends who's from USA and UK that's also having their business here in China as well, so i hope that helps
IT helps a bit How long does it take as its already 2 weeks just for my bank in Uk to transfer accounts and still no reply? I beieve its complicated in Japan as you have to have an office there and a UK one or something very expensive like that. Are you in Shanghai or Beijing? Japan requires 2 japanese I think to qualify for a VISA plus the other thing about office so Chinese programmers look pretty good to me. What do they expect for salaries? IF I get a spouse VISA I.E get married, will that cover hiring chinese etc. and run a game there?
Japan is complicated, since the system in Japan protects their own people like crazy, you have to employee Japan citizens and full health care and so on...the tax rate is higher also, I think you can just imgaine the rest. China is somewhat easy, your foreign investment need to be at least around 25k-35k usd to make it a foreign joint venture company(don't know exactly the name). It will save you from the Chinese local tax and the programmers here are cheaper, well, compare to Japan, but finding the right ones can be a grinding experience and same goes finding the perfect animators as well. But if you keep looking, you will find the right one eventually. The salaries are ranged from 400 usd/month - 6500 usd/month for programmer, sounds strange? well it is, our team is based in Dalian, the salary level is lower than Shanghai and Beijing, it is not about how good a programmer you can find but it is about finding the right young protentials that can help the team to thrive in a very short time and yet not eating budgets too much at the beginning. So if you looked hard and find a newly promising graudate student you might just spend very little on salary and save you some precious budget to build up your team. If you intend to hire an already experienced programmer that has been working for Gameloft Shanghai office, then you'd be looking to spend around 6500 usd/month. But if your budget is not in the millions, I think you should avoid cities like Beijing or Shanghai, the rent itself will eat your budget dry. It doens't matter if you get married or what kinda visa you get if you decided to go China and investing, China might be evil in some westerners' eyes but China is quite open, lose and helpful to the foreign investors, so I guess that's something unique. hope that helps mate
Tax Any expert about a UK citizen moving country? Do I pay UK tax or not fir Iphone Ipad game/app sales?