Japan vs Malta
$100,000 of real income is ¥10,333,658 in Japan and €61,036 in Malta. After income tax and every compulsory contribution, Malta leaves you $3,237 a year more to spend than Japan — and what each tax buys back is the half of the question no dataset prices.
Malta leaves $3,237 a year more than Japan on the same real income, after income tax and compulsory social contributions.
Malta leaves you $3,237 a year more to spend than Japan
The figures on this page are in international dollars, and that choice is the whole reason the comparison means anything. Converting JPY to EUR at the exchange rate would measure what your money is worth if you carried it abroad. What you want to know is what it buys where you earn it, and for that the right conversion is purchasing power parity — a basket of what households actually buy, priced in each country.
So: $100,000 of real income is ¥10,333,658 in Japan and €61,036 in Malta. Those two salaries buy the same thing before tax. They do not buy the same thing after it.
After everything compulsory — income tax and the social contributions that come off a payslip — Japanese take-home is ¥7,481,432 and Maltese take-home is €46,165. Back in the common unit that is $72,399 against $75,636, a difference of $3,237 a year and $32,370 over 10 years.
Grey columns are what a year of Japan and a year of Malta are worth in the same money. The bars between them are each thing that changes, in the order it changes: green adds, amber takes away.
Per month, which is how anyone actually reads a payslip: ¥623,453 in Japan and €3,847 in Malta — $6,033 and $6,303 once both are put in the same unit. The $270 a month between them is the figure worth carrying into a negotiation.
Japan takes 27.6% of the gross and Malta takes 24.4%.
Income tax is only part of it, and the smaller part in Japan
Most comparisons between countries stop at the income tax rate. That is the number governments publish and the number newspapers repeat, and on a payslip it is routinely the smaller of the two deductions.
Japan, on ¥10,333,658: income tax ¥894,294 and compulsory contributions ¥1,957,932 — 8.7% and 18.9% of gross. The contributions are employees’ health insurance, tokyo branch (¥508,933), child and childcare support levy (¥11,884), employees’ pension insurance (¥713,700), employment insurance (¥51,668), local inhabitant tax, prefectural and municipal (¥671,747).
Malta, on €61,036: income tax €11,963 and compulsory contributions €2,908 — 19.6% and 4.8%. Made up of social security contribution, class 1, born 1962 or later (€2,908).
The base the tax is charged on is not the same thing in the two countries either. Japan taxes gross salary and Malta taxes chargeable income.
Cheaper in Malta than JapanDearer in Malta than Japan
Each bar is how far apart Japan and Malta are on that component, and which way. Housing almost always runs several times wider than everything else — which is why a single blended index tells you very little.
Neither country hides its contributions inside the income tax figure, so the two lines above are directly comparable: in both, what is labelled income tax is income tax and what is labelled contributions is everything else compulsory.
This is the part that took the longest to get right on this site, and it was wrong here before: the country pages used to show income tax alone and call the remainder take-home. On a salary like this that overstated what you keep by $18,947 a year in the worse of the two.
What the tax buys is the other half, and this page cannot measure it
Everything above measures what leaves your pay. It says nothing about what comes back, and between two countries that is not a detail — it is the larger half of the question.
In one country the tax bill includes your healthcare, your children's university and a pension you will actually live on. In another it does not, and you buy those yourself out of the money the page just told you that you kept. A comparison that declares a winner on take-home alone is the same trick as comparing top tax rates, which is the thing this site exists to argue against.
We looked for a way to put that half into a comparable number and there is not one. No international dataset measures the value of what a tax system returns to a household. Saying so is more useful than a made-up index.
One piece of it does exist as a figure, and here it is. Out-of-pocket health spending per person, 2023: $656 in Japan against $1,765 in Malta. That is what households pay directly, after whatever the public system covers — so it is a partial, honest measure of what the tax is not buying. A household in Malta pays $1,109 a year more directly, which eats into the take-home advantage above.
The same figure as a share tells you more than the amount does. Japan spends $5,365 per person on health altogether and 12.2% of it comes straight out of households; Malta spends $5,706 with 30.9% out of pocket. That is a real difference in how the same service is paid for — and it moves in the direction of Malta collecting less in tax and leaving more to be paid at the point of use.
And health is one line of several. Pensions, childcare, university fees, unemployment cover and the quality of what the money buys are all outside these figures — some of them larger than health. Read the numbers above as what you keep, not as who is better off.
To live the same in Malta you would need $95,458
The question behind most of these searches is not which country is cheaper. It is "I have an offer — is it enough?"
Matching what $100,000 buys you in Japan takes $95,458 of real income in Malta, which is €58,264 at Maltese prices. That is 4.5% less than you earn now — you could take a cut of $4,542 and be no worse off.
It is solved by inverting the whole calculation rather than scaling it. Brackets, contribution ceilings and deductions that do not move with pay all break the straight line, and they break it exactly at the salaries where people negotiate. A rule of thumb gets this wrong by thousands.
The dashed line is the salary you earn now. The solid line is what matches it in Malta. If the relationship were a simple multiplier the two would be parallel — they are not, because brackets, the Social Security ceiling and a property tax that does not move with income all bend it.
The figure also moves with the salary, which is why the chart below is a line and not a number: Japanese and Maltese systems are progressive to different degrees, so the gap between them is not a fixed percentage.
The answer changes with the salary, and sometimes it flips
Both systems are progressive, but not in the same way and not at the same points. Resolved at six levels of real income:
On $30,000 — Malta by $1,064 a year. Japan keeps $24,006 of it, Malta $25,070; effective rates 20.0% and 16.4%.
On $50,000 — Japan by $614 a year. Japan keeps $38,919 of it, Malta $38,305; effective rates 22.2% and 23.4%.
On $75,000 — Malta by $1,179 a year. Japan keeps $55,877 of it, Malta $57,055; effective rates 25.5% and 23.9%.
On $100,000 — Malta by $3,237 a year. Japan keeps $72,399 of it, Malta $75,636; effective rates 27.6% and 24.4%.
On $150,000 — Malta by $6,563 a year. Japan keeps $101,573 of it, Malta $108,136; effective rates 32.3% and 27.9%.
On $250,000 — Malta by $18,759 a year. Japan keeps $154,377 of it, Malta $173,136; effective rates 38.2% and 30.7%.
The direction holds across the whole range — Malta at every level from $30,000 to $250,000 — but the size of the gap does not: it runs from $1,064 to $18,759.
Contribution ceilings are usually what bends these lines. Where a country caps its social contributions, the effective rate falls away above the cap; where it does not, it keeps climbing. That single design choice moves high salaries more than any headline rate does.
What is strange about each of these two systems
A bracket is a bracket everywhere. What separates two tax systems is the exception each one carries, and neither of these appears in a table of rates:
Japan — top rate 45.0%, reached at ¥40,000,000, with ¥1,600,000 exempt at the bottom. A quick calculation table instead of bands, and a 2.1% reconstruction surtax charged on the tax rather than the income.
Malta — top rate 35.0%, reached at €60,000, with €12,000 exempt at the bottom. Seven separate computations rather than one scale, and a five-euro discontinuity written into the statute itself.
Both relieve the bottom of the scale the same way, through an exempt band of income taxed at nothing, so the two scales are at least comparable in shape even where the rates differ.
The top rate is the figure that gets quoted and it is rarely the one that matters: what decides a normal salary is where the scale starts biting, how the relief at the bottom is given, and whether social contributions are capped. All three are above.
A raise is worth about the same in both
The effective rates above are averages over the whole salary. They are not what you feel when you get a rise, and the two can point in opposite directions.
On the next $1,000 of real income at this level, Japan takes 34.4% and leaves you $656; Malta takes 35.0% and leaves you $650.
The two are within three points of each other, so a pay rise negotiated in either country is worth roughly the same after tax even where the average rates differ.
Marginal rates are where contribution ceilings, tapering allowances and surcharges show up. They are also what decides whether a promotion, a bonus or a second job is worth the trouble, and they are almost never in a comparison of headline rates.
Whether the contributions ever stop is the difference nobody looks at
Income tax scales are progressive almost everywhere. Social contributions are not: most countries stop charging them above a ceiling, a few never stop, and that single design choice moves high salaries more than any rate in a table.
Japan: contributions take 18.9% of a $100,000 salary and 15.0% of a $250,000 one. They are capped — the share falls away as pay rises, so the Japanese system leans on income tax at the top.
Malta: 4.8% at $100,000 and 1.9% at $250,000. Capped as well, on the same pattern.
Both behave the same way in this respect, so the comparison between them stays fairly stable as the salary grows — the gap changes in size but not in kind.
Total share of gross taken at the two levels: 27.6% and 38.2% in Japan, 24.4% and 30.7% in Malta.
These are not equally rich countries, and the price level says so
One more thing has to be said before any of the figures above are read as advice. Japan and Malta do not have the same salaries to offer.
On the World Bank's index of household prices, where the United States is 100, Japan sits at 69 and Malta at 69. That is what the conversion on this page corrects for: $100,000 of real income costs an employer ¥10,333,658 in one and €61,036 in the other.
Output per person, also in international dollars: $55,422 in Japan and $72,210 in Malta. The gap is large, and it matters for a practical reason: a salary of $100,000 in real terms is a far more ordinary job in one of these two than in the other. Comparing the tax on an identical real salary is the right comparison; assuming the salary is equally available is not.
Which is the limit of every figure on this page, stated once more: it prices a salary you already have an offer for. It does not tell you that the offer exists.
Among the 27 countries here, Japan is 15th and Malta is 9th
Both resolved on the same $100,000 of real income, ranked by what is left to spend:
Thailand keeps the most, $90,352, and Italy the least, $60,321 — a spread of $30,031 on identical real pay.
Japan sits at $72,399 and Malta at $75,636. They are 6 places apart.
Sitting immediately around them: Canada at $72,437, Jamaica at $72,545, New Zealand at $71,870, The United Kingdom at $73,049. If the difference between Japan and Malta looks decisive, notice how many other countries fall inside the same span — take-home alone rarely separates two places as cleanly as a single pair suggests.
A ranking of what you keep is not a ranking of where to live, and the gap between those two statements is the whole of the previous section. How this is calculated, including what it refuses to claim.
Over 10 years: $32,370
At $3,237 a year, 10 years in Malta rather than Japan is worth $32,370 in today's purchasing power.
A move between countries is the expensive kind, and none of that is in the figure: visas, shipping, a deposit in a currency you do not yet earn, and in many cases a period of paying into two systems at once. There are also tax-residence rules that decide which country taxes you in the year you move, and they are not modelled here.
The line starts below zero because moving costs about $15,000 and lands entirely in year one. It takes until year 5 for the move to pay for itself. That is the figure a per-year comparison hides.
At three horizons: $9,711 over three years, $32,370 over 10, $97,111 over thirty.
The longer the horizon, the more the part this page cannot measure matters — a pension you accrue, healthcare you will need later, a child's education. A ten-year figure on take-home alone flatters whichever country asks for less now.
The other comparisons people run next
Every country here is resolved against every other on the same real income. The ones most often paired with these two:
Australia vs Japan — Australia by $1,526 a year.
Austria vs Japan — Japan by $7,152 a year.
Canada vs Japan — level.
Ethiopia vs Japan — Japan by $11,038 a year.
France vs Japan — Japan by $3,549 a year.
Germany vs Japan — Japan by $11,334 a year.
Hong Kong vs Japan — Hong Kong by $15,406 a year.
India vs Japan — India by $16,857 a year.
Ireland vs Japan — Japan by $6,198 a year.
Italy vs Japan — Japan by $12,077 a year.
Or start from one country: every Japan comparison and every Malta comparison, each resolving all 26 on one page.
Where every number here comes from
The price level and the conversion between currencies:
World Bank, International Comparison Program — PPP conversion factor, household final consumption expenditure (LCU per international $), 2025 — read 2026-09-11. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/PA.NUS.PRVT.PP
World Bank — Price level ratio of PPP conversion factor to market exchange rate, 2025 (United States = 100) — read 2026-09-11. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/PA.NUS.PPP.03.CD
World Health Organization Global Health Expenditure Database, via World Bank — Out-of-pocket health expenditure per capita, PPP, 2023 — read 2026-09-11. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.OOPC.PP.CD
The Japanese figures:
Japan income tax — from the authority that sets it, with the rates and thresholds on the Japan calculator page.
Japan contributions — Japan Health Insurance Association (協会けんぽ) — 令和8年3月分からの健康保険・厚生年金保険の保険料額表, Tokyo branch: health insurance 9.85%, the child and childcare support levy 0.23% and employees’ pension 18.300%, each shared equally with the employer, on standard monthly remuneration capped at ¥1,390,000 for health and ¥650,000 for pension. Read 2026-09-11. https://www.kyoukaikenpo.or.jp/assets/R8_13tokyo.pdf
Japan contributions — Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare — employment insurance rates for 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027: the employee share for general businesses is 5/1,000. Read 2026-09-11. https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/001692566.pdf
Japan contributions — Local inhabitant tax (住民税) is levied by the prefecture and the municipality at a combined standard rate of 10% of the previous year’s income after a basic deduction of ¥430,000, plus a per-capita levy of ¥5,000. Read 2026-09-11. https://www.soumu.go.jp/main_sosiki/jichi_zeisei/czaisei/czaisei_seido/kojin_jyuminzei.html
The Maltese figures:
Malta contributions — Department of Social Security — Social Security Contributions (Class 1) 2026, employed persons born from 1 January 1962 onwards: a flat €22.94 a week on a basic weekly wage up to €229.44, 10% between €229.45 and €559.30, and a flat €55.93 a week at €559.31 and above. Read 2026-09-11. https://socialsecurity.gov.mt/en/information-and-applications-for-benefits-and-services/social-security-contributions/social-security-contributions-class-1-2026/
And what is still not modelled on either side, stated rather than left to be discovered:
— Japan: Health insurance rates are set by prefecture. The figures use the Tokyo branch of the Japan Health Insurance Association, and the page says so.
— Japan: Employees aged 40 to 64 also pay long-term care insurance, which adds 1.62 points to the health insurance rate, half of it on the employee. It is not applied here.
— Japan: Inhabitant tax is charged on the previous year’s income, so it is not paid in a first year of work and continues after leaving a job. A steady salary is modelled, where the two coincide.
— Japan: Standard monthly remuneration is fixed in bands from the April to June average rather than from the actual monthly salary, and bonuses carry their own separate ceilings.
— Malta: Employees born up to 31 December 1961 reach the flat top rate at a lower wage, €490.39 a week, and pay €49.04 rather than €55.93.
— Malta: The Maternity Leave Fund contribution is paid by the employer only and does not appear here.
— Malta: A contribution year in Malta is 52 or 53 weeks depending on the calendar. Fifty-two are used here.
The price figures are the 2025 release and are not extrapolated to the current year.
Where to go next
Questions
- Is it better to earn in Japan or Malta?
- On what you keep, Malta: $3,237 a year more in spending power on the same real income of $100,000. On whether you are better off, that is a different question — the two countries do not buy the same things with the tax they collect, and this page says what it can measure and what it cannot.
- How much do I need to earn in Malta to match Japan?
- $95,458 of real income, which is €58,264 at Maltese prices — 4.5% less than you earn now. It is solved by inverting the calculation, because brackets and contribution ceilings break any simple proportion.
- Why not just compare the tax rates?
- Because the income tax rate is routinely the smaller of the two deductions. On this pair, compulsory social contributions are ¥1,957,932 in Japan and €2,908 in Malta, on top of income tax of ¥894,294 and €11,963. A comparison of headline rates misses all of that, and in several countries it misses more than half of what comes off the payslip.
- Why international dollars instead of euros or dollars?
- Because an exchange rate measures what money is worth if you carry it abroad, not what it buys where you earn it. The conversion used here is the World Bank's purchasing power parity factor for household consumption, which prices a comparable basket in each country. $100,000 of real income is ¥10,333,658 in Japan and €61,036 in Malta — two very different numbers that buy the same thing.
- Does this include what the tax pays for?
- No, and that is the honest limit of the comparison. In one country the tax includes healthcare, education and a pension; in another the household buys those itself. No international dataset measures the value of what a tax system returns, so this page does not pretend to. The one piece that is measured is out-of-pocket health spending per person: $656 in Japan against $1,765 in Malta.
- If I move from Japan to Malta, which country taxes me that year?
- That is decided by tax residence rules, and they are not modelled here. Most countries tax you as a resident from the day you arrive or from a day-count threshold, and a double tax treaty decides which one wins where both claim you. In the year of a move it is common to file in both. The figures on this page describe a full year settled in one country, not the year you cross between them — and the difference in that one year can be larger than the annual gap shown above.
- Do these figures assume a single person?
- Yes: one earner, no children, the main regional scale where a country has more than one, and no deductions beyond the standard ones. Japan and Malta both treat households differently from single filers, and in some countries — joint assessment, family quotients, child credits — the difference is large enough to reverse the comparison. The single-filer case is the one that can be stated identically in all 27 countries, which is why it is the one used.
- Which country takes the largest share of a salary?
- Of the 27 here, Italy leaves the least of a $100,000 real income — $60,321 — and Thailand the most, $90,352. Japan leaves $72,399 and Malta $75,636.