The Truth Behind Eimi Fukada's Tax Evasion Scandal (Part 2)

Parts of this column contain excerpts from the original article published on Gendai, dated June 24th.

Before we begin with this column, let's do a quick recap on the prior column of this exposé on Eimi Fukada's tax fiasco. We learned that her former boss, a financial consultant, started a JAV company in 2015. They introduced a girl in her early 20s who would become Eimi Fukada to the company a year later. After some initial unsuccessful attempts, Fukada requested to overhaul her image and relaunched it in 2018.

Fukada's career boomed, and she eventually landed a lucrative contract with a major studio. Yoshida, her boss negotiated a one-year contract with a payout of 700,000 yen ($4,482) per title, totaling 100.8 million yen ($6,45,469) annually. However, Fukada became difficult to manage and started skipping filming schedules.

Eimi before & after cosmetic enhancement

He attributed this to Fukada's newfound fame. To maintain her, they outsourced her YouTube channel creation to a company and tolerated her behavior. Fukada eventually signed a contract with a video streaming company without informing her boss

Denying the rumors, her boss says they did not withhold taxes from Fukada's earnings and provided Gendai with a copy of a Line exchange where Fukada requested them to falsify her taxes.

So it all began with an article published on FLASH that quoted 'Eimi's acquaintance', testifying "Her monthly salary was about 2 million yen ($12,806), and her annual income was about 24 million yen ($1,53,685) before the tax department officials came knocking at her door". The Gendai reporter questioned Fukada’s former boss over his alleged payments to Eimi and his side of the story on the claim made by Flash, to which he responded that the entire claim is fabricated, “The 2 million yen ($12,806) is the amount deposited into Fukada's corporate and personal accounts, and does not include any offline transfers. I kept all the ledgers and submitted them to the National Tax Agency, so I have the evidence.”

To understand this, we must examine how Eimi collected payments from her office during her stint. Gendai claims that she accepted payments through multiple mediums, through her personal office's corporate account which could be an LLC she might’ve formed when she had the know-how of how entities carry out business as per my assumption, her personal bank account, or by offline means.

To give you a perspective on the number she has raked in over the years, let's dive into it. In her initial years at the office from 2018 to 2021, Eimi shot an average of 10 films per month with multiple manufacturers at 600k yen ($3,842) per film. Later on from 2021-2022, as a freelance actress, she had a contract with DMM for 12 films per month at 700k yen ($4,479) per film. In recent years, i.e. 2022-2023 while still mostly doing freelance gigs as a solo actress, she has been charging 5.5 million yen ($35,194) for one film per month, so if the stats provided by Gendai are to be taken into consideration just her monthly share would be an average of 3 million yen ($19,197) in period her first set of years, 4.2 million yen ($26,875) in the period in her first stint as a freelance actress, and 2.75 million yen ($17,562) in the recent years and this is as per the industry rules, the agency and the actress split the fee in half.

Here, the thing to note is that we haven’t considered various advertising fees, rent subsidies from the agency, and other income that she also receives which are likely to fall in the bracket of her income that is to be taxed.

Her former boss Kenichi Yoshida told Gendai, “At her request, I deposited the sum into her corporate and personal accounts at all times, and handed over the rest in paper bills. The most I paid in a month was 5 to 6 million yen (approx. $38,318), including advertising fees."

Remember the 80 million yen ($5,11,564) in additional taxes over the past seven years that Eimi had raked in? That’s quite a fortune to make entirely just from AV right, well think again! Part of the 80 million yen that was made public by the National Tax Agency taxed as personal income tax, also included her YouTube income.

Eimi has been posting on YouTube since early 2021 and let’s just assume she has had income from YouTube for most of her time on the platform. Considering how her YouTube channel now has about 1.2 million subscribers, she must have had a good inflow of income even at the time the National Tax Agency sent her a notice on the tax she owed to the NTA. However, for some reason, she says that her previous agency did not declare it, and till now Gendai has been unable to get a comment from Eimi on how she handles her taxation for YouTube income.

So for the unversed, In the first place, as an unspoken rule in the AV industry, the salary paid to the actress as per the contract is disclosed to the actress by the studio. So, there is no room for an agency to dupe or cheat a particular actress with her hard-earned income (pun intended). Yoshida, besides being the director of 44 Management, is also the director of the AV industry Second Production Association so he admits to being in favor of disclosing income information to the actresses under his agency’s watch.

Moving on, Gendai questioned him over whether he wished his agency had more control over the tax matters of the actresses under his watch.

Eimi Fukada poses for a selfie with her former boss, Kenichi Yoshida

To which he states, “We explained that the actresses were solely responsible for filing their tax returns. All AV agencies have contracts like this. In fact, for actresses other than Fukada, more than 90% of the payment was made through direct deposit”

So it is pretty much clear from his statement that filing taxes is something that the actresses would do after deducting agency commissions unless there is an anomaly where an actress prefers the agency to file on her part rather than hiring a CFA’s services.

It is noted for a fact that no additional tax was levied on the other 30 actresses affiliated with the agency, and it was only Fukada who was taxed by the National Tax Department. This makes it pretty evident that it is not the agency's fault.

Yoshida revealed that in Fukada's case, she earns a lot from YouTube, so his agency has no way of getting involved in the tax treatment of that. Fukada filed the taxes through accountants at a firm named ICF, which her former boss revealed.

Now the crux of this entire revelation comes down to this particular evidence that Yoshida presented to Gendai’s reporter that reveals what illegal practice Eimi had indulged in in the past. Yoshida pulled out a LINE conversation between Fukada and him.

"I told my tax accountant that the yellow column was a mistake. I would like you to make fake ones for September and October as well." (From a LINE message dated February 25, 2022)”

In a LINE exchange between Fukada and Yoshida on February 25, 2022, Fukada requested the preparation of documents showing false income. If you take a close look, you’ll find out that the attached yellow sheet shows her actual income as 5,525,000 yen, ($35,329) while the blue calculation sheet shows it as 1,000,000 yen ($6,394), which is likely to be a forged document.

Yoshida explains, "In reality, she had earned 5,525,000 yen that month, but at Fukada's request, we submitted a false ledger to the tax accountant that listed an income of 1 million yen that was less than the actual amount.” To simply put it, this is what JWL had meant while mentioning how Eimi had been keeping double books.

Gendai questioned Yoshida over his alleged role in the tax fuck up and his conversation with Eimi after the tax investigation started grabbing mainstream attention,

"In a video posted in April this year, she explained that she felt betrayed and that I suddenly started using polite language with her" Moreover, She denied all the allegations against her in the video by saying, ''I don't know anything about my previous agency because I have nothing to do with it."

He adds "I didn't react or anything, I just went to the office and ran the business as usual. I hadn't complained about the way the office had handled things up until that point, right after the tax office was investigated. More than a year later, in February of this year, Flash reported the story, and Fukada responded with an explanation, but my honest impression is that it's so late that she's suddenly started saying things like this."

Post this matter came to light, Yoshida has already stepped down as chairman and handed over his reign to the next deserving candidate. On being asked What was the reason for this?

He mentioned it was more about his desire to retire from the business rather than what some would perceive as an attempt to wrap stuff and flee the scene, "I stepped down in February 2023 after the tax investigation. Fukada's contract with the manufacturer ended in June of the previous year, and I was also tired of the AV industry, so my retirement was planned from the beginning. It's not like I quit and ran away."

As a parting thought Gendai asked him about his thoughts on his former colleague, Eimi. Yoshida replied that he did make attempts to get back at her through her current agency Mine’s but found out, much to his surprise that she had left the office due to her erratic work commitments

"I contacted the president of Mines, the agency she's transferred to, but I was told that she's already skipped several productions, is no longer affiliated with the agency, and is now only on a contract basis. So, Fukada is now mostly a freelance AV actress and YouTuber. She's still releasing new films, but I think they were filmed before her contract expired. She's already infamous for skipping productions, so I don't think there's any place in the industry that would accept her."

Eimi plays a nurse in her latest outing, FSDSS-789

It seems like Fukada is more focused on breaking into the mainstream scene than the industry that got her to taste early success. This whole conversation feels like Yoshida is discontent with her attitude and sees her unfit as a professional. No wonder the allegations she had directed towards him made him turn salty.

"When she posted something on X in February that mentioned my name, I asked her to delete it, but she didn't respond. I told Minds about it, and the post was deleted. I was considering filing a lawsuit for defamation, but decided against it.”

However, she has still not offered any explanation for the fact that her explanation was incorrect. I think she should admit her fault. Eimi may not be able to do it now that she is a celebrity of some sort. Yoshida feels that his name was pulled into this fiasco unnecessarily and said that he felt betrayed."I thought that I needed to make a certain counterargument to clear up the misunderstandings in public, so I agreed to be interviewed. Fukada has no choice but to continue working hard, so I hope she will draw a clear line under this."

This is not related to Fukada, but on some social media sites there are posts from anonymous posters claiming that Mr. Yoshida has suffered losses amounting to several tens of millions of yen." What do you think about this?

"I checked the post, but I still don't know what it was about. The office has a variety of transactions that require payments, so it may have been one of those issues, but from our perspective, we have not cheated anyone or taken their salary, and there is no need for us to do so. Since I left the office, there have been no reports of any such damage from the office."

The editorial department of Gendai Business called Fukada on her phone multiple times and also sent her a questionnaire, but received no response.

I believe if you’ve sat through this whole exposé, then you must have developed a clear picture of the incident as to who’s right and who’s wrong, though we’re not taking sides. At ZENRA our job is to provide unbiased reporting on the happenings in the JAV industry. I just hope after all this Eimi gains perspective on how to manage her finances rather than put blame and frame her boss as the scapegoat. After all, being a professional, she commands a huge fanbase. As fans, we do expect a bit of accountability on her part besides being seduced by her on-screen, thanks to her JAVs!

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