Estimate your Japanese take-home pay: national income tax, reconstruction surtax, resident tax (juminzei) and social insurance (shakai hoken).
Japan taxes employment income at three levels. First, national income tax (shotokuzei) is charged on a progressive scale from 5% to 45%. Before the brackets apply, your salary is reduced by the employment income deduction (a minimum of ¥650,000 from 2025), social insurance premiums you paid, and the basic deduction of ¥580,000. A temporary reconstruction surtax of 2.1% is then added to your national tax bill until 2037 to fund recovery from the 2011 Tohoku earthquake.
Second, resident tax (juminzei) goes to your prefecture and municipality. It is a flat rate of roughly 10% of taxable income (calculated with a slightly lower ¥430,000 basic deduction) plus a small per-capita charge of about ¥5,000. Crucially, resident tax is billed a year in arrears — the bill you pay from June each year is based on last year's income, which surprises many newcomers and departing expats.
Third, social insurance (shakai hoken) is deducted from every payslip. The employee share is roughly 14–15% of gross pay: about 5% for health insurance, 9.15% for the employees' pension (kosei nenkin, capped at a standard monthly salary of ¥650,000), and 0.55% for employment insurance. Employees aged 40–64 also pay a nursing care (kaigo hoken) premium of about 0.8%.
| Taxable income | Rate | Deduction |
|---|---|---|
| Up to ¥1,950,000 | 5% | — |
| ¥1,950,001 – ¥3,300,000 | 10% | ¥97,500 |
| ¥3,300,001 – ¥6,950,000 | 20% | ¥427,500 |
| ¥6,950,001 – ¥9,000,000 | 23% | ¥636,000 |
| ¥9,000,001 – ¥18,000,000 | 33% | ¥1,536,000 |
| ¥18,000,001 – ¥40,000,000 | 40% | ¥2,796,000 |
| Over ¥40,000,000 | 45% | ¥4,796,000 |
If you are a foreign resident employed in Japan, your employer withholds income tax and social insurance automatically through gensen choshu (withholding at source), and most salaried employees never need to file a return — the year-end adjustment (nenmatsu chosei) settles the balance. You generally must file a kakutei shinkoku (tax return, due mid-March) if you earn over ¥20 million, have significant side income, or want to claim deductions such as furusato nozei (hometown tax donations), medical expenses or the home loan credit.
Non-permanent residents (foreigners who have lived in Japan five years or less within the last ten) are taxed only on Japan-source income and foreign income remitted to Japan. If you send money home regularly, using a low-fee provider and keeping records matters — both for cost and for how remittances interact with your tax status. Pension contributions are not lost if you leave: shortterm foreign workers can claim a lump-sum withdrawal payment of up to five years of pension contributions after departing Japan, or use a totalisation agreement if your country has one.