The NTA publishes a rate times income minus a deduction, not a list of bands — and on top of the result sits a 2.1% reconstruction surtax charged on the tax itself.
¥314,979 in tax — 5.2% of ¥6,000,000, or ¥473,752 a month.
Employment income deduction給与所得控除, at least ¥650,000
−¥1,640,000
Basic deduction基礎控除, falls in steps with income
−¥680,000
Taxable incomeRounded down to the nearest ¥1,000, as the statute requires
¥3,680,000
Income taxSeven rates, 5% to 45%
¥308,500
Reconstruction surtax2.1% of the tax, not of the income — runs to 2037
¥6,479
Marginal rateBand rate times 1.021, which appears in no table
20.4%
Inhabitant tax at roughly 10% and social insurance premiums are charged on top of this and are not included. For many salaries the local tax is comparable in size to the national one.
What this does not model. Local inhabitant tax (住民税) is not included. It is charged by the prefecture and municipality at roughly 10% of the previous year’s income plus a small per-capita amount, and for most employees it is comparable in size to the national income tax. Social insurance premiums (社会保険料) — health, pension, employment and, from age 40, long-term care — are not deducted. They are large, they are withheld from every payslip, and they are also fully deductible from taxable income, so leaving them out overstates the tax.
Japan does not publish brackets — it publishes a quick calculation table
The National Tax Agency's rate page does not list marginal bands. It lists a 速算表, a quick calculation table, in the form "taxable income × rate − deduction". On ¥7,000,000 of taxable income the NTA's own worked example reads ¥7,000,000 × 0.23 − ¥636,000 = ¥974,000.
That is algebraically identical to marginal bands, and it is a far better published artefact than a list of rates. Each row asserts an exact deduction, and the deduction only comes out right if every threshold below it is right. A scale with one shifted threshold still produces plausible percentages; it does not reproduce ¥636,000.
This site's tests check all six published deductions and the NTA's worked example, which is why the figure here can be relied on to be the statutory scale rather than a transcription of it.
The seven rates are 5%, 10%, 20%, 23%, 33%, 40% and 45%, with thresholds at ¥1,950,000, ¥3,300,000, ¥6,950,000, ¥9,000,000, ¥18,000,000 and ¥40,000,000 of taxable income.
One more detail from the same page that most calculators drop: taxable income is rounded down to the nearest ¥1,000 before the table is applied. It is small, it is in the statute, and it is applied here.
The ¥1,600,000 wall, and the reform that moved it
Japanese public debate has spent years arguing about 年収の壁 — income walls, the salary levels at which working more starts to cost you. The most famous was ¥1,030,000, the point at which income tax began.
The 令和7 reform moved it. The minimum employment income deduction rose to ¥650,000 and the basic deduction for lower incomes rose to ¥950,000. Added together, the first ¥1,600,000 of salary is now free of national income tax.
The arithmetic is exact rather than approximate, and this calculator reproduces it: at ¥1,600,000 the tax is zero, and one yen of salary above it is not. That is the kind of claim worth testing rather than asserting, and there is a test for it.
Both deductions are applied automatically here. The employment income deduction converts gross salary into 給与所得; the basic deduction then comes off that. Everything else — spouse, dependants, insurance premiums, medical expenses, the housing loan credit — has to be claimed and is not modelled.
The wall was never only about income tax. Social insurance has walls of its own at different salary levels, and those are the ones that produce the sharpest jumps in what a part-time worker actually keeps. None of them is in this figure.
Two deductions before the scale, and both of them taper
Japan does not have a single tax-free allowance. It has two deductions that stack, and each behaves differently as income rises.
The employment income deduction starts at ¥650,000 and grows with salary — 30% plus ¥80,000 in one band, 20% plus ¥440,000 in the next, 10% plus ¥1,100,000 in the next — and then stops dead at ¥1,950,000 above ¥8,500,000 of salary. It exists because an employee cannot deduct actual work expenses, so the law grants a notional figure instead.
The basic deduction goes the other way. It is ¥950,000 for total income up to ¥1,320,000, then falls in steps — ¥880,000, ¥680,000, ¥630,000, ¥580,000 — and finally to ¥480,000, ¥320,000, ¥160,000 and nothing above ¥25,000,000.
Because both move, the effective rate does not rise smoothly. On ¥6,000,000 of salary the employment income deduction is ¥1,640,000 and the basic deduction is ¥680,000, leaving ¥3,680,000 taxable — an effective rate of 5.2% on gross against a band of 20%.
The withdrawal of the basic deduction above ¥23,500,000 is a taper in the same family as the UK's Personal Allowance withdrawal, though gentler: it removes ¥950,000 of relief in four steps rather than pound for pound.
The 2.1% reconstruction surtax, charged on the tax and not on the income
Since 2013, and until 2037, every Japanese income tax bill carries a 復興特別所得税 — a special income tax for reconstruction — at 2.1% of the income tax itself.
It is charged on the tax, not on the income, which is why it appears in no rate table. Someone in the 23% band does not face 23% on their next yen; they face 23% × 1.021, or 23.483%. At the top, 45% becomes 45.945%.
That is exactly the mechanism India uses for its cess, and the two are the only examples of it among the seventeen countries on this site. Both are small in percentage terms and both make every published marginal rate slightly wrong.
It was introduced to fund reconstruction after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, with a legislated end date twenty-five years out. It is one of very few taxes anywhere that names both its purpose and its expiry in the statute that created it.
This calculator applies it and shows it as a separate line, because folding it into the tax would hide the one thing a reader needs to know about it: it is there, it is on the tax, and it will still be there for another decade.
Inhabitant tax, the other half of the bill
A Japanese employee pays two income taxes. This page covers the national one. The other is 住民税, inhabitant tax, charged by the prefecture and the municipality at broadly 10% of the previous year's income plus a small flat per-capita amount.
For a middle income it is comparable in size to the national tax and sometimes larger, because the national scale is gentle in the middle while the local rate is flat. Ignoring it understates the total charge on a Japanese salary by a very wide margin.
It also lags. Inhabitant tax for a year is computed on the previous year's income and collected from June onwards, which is why someone who leaves a job still receives bills, and why a first-year worker's take-home falls in the summer of their second year.
Its deductions are similar to the national ones but not identical — the basic deduction is smaller — so it cannot be estimated by applying 10% to the national taxable income figure.
Social insurance is the third layer: health, pension, employment and, from age 40, long-term care. Those premiums are large, they are withheld monthly, and they are fully deductible from national taxable income, so leaving them out here overstates the national tax as well as understating the total deduction.
The scale at four salaries
Each figure is gross salary, with the employment income deduction and the basic deduction applied and nothing else. National income tax only, reconstruction surtax included.
On ¥3,000,000: ¥980,000 of employment income deduction and ¥880,000 of basic deduction leave ¥1,140,000 taxable — ¥57,000 of income tax plus ¥1,197 of reconstruction surtax, ¥58,197 in total, an effective rate of 1.9%.
On ¥5,000,000: ¥1,440,000 of employment income deduction and ¥680,000 of basic deduction leave ¥2,880,000 taxable — ¥190,500 of income tax plus ¥4,001 of reconstruction surtax, ¥194,501 in total, an effective rate of 3.9%.
On ¥8,000,000: ¥1,900,000 of employment income deduction and ¥630,000 of basic deduction leave ¥5,470,000 taxable — ¥666,500 of income tax plus ¥13,997 of reconstruction surtax, ¥680,497 in total, an effective rate of 8.5%.
On ¥15,000,000: ¥1,950,000 of employment income deduction and ¥580,000 of basic deduction leave ¥12,470,000 taxable — ¥2,579,100 of income tax plus ¥54,161 of reconstruction surtax, ¥2,633,261 in total, an effective rate of 17.6%.
The effective rate rises slowly through the middle because both deductions are still substantial there. It accelerates above ¥9,000,000, where the 33% band begins and the employment income deduction has already stopped growing.
How Japan compares with the rest of this site
Against India, the surtax mechanism is the same. Both charge a percentage of the tax rather than of the income — Japan's reconstruction surtax, India's cess — and in both cases the published marginal rate is therefore never the real one.
Against Germany, the contrast is in how the rules are expressed. Germany writes the tax as a polynomial with no thresholds at all; Japan writes it as a rate table plus a deduction column. Two different ways of avoiding a plain list of bands, reached for opposite reasons.
Against the United Kingdom, the basic deduction taper is a milder version of the Personal Allowance withdrawal. The UK removes its allowance pound for pound and creates a 60% band; Japan removes its basic deduction in four steps and creates four small ones.
Against Canada, the two-layer structure rhymes: a national scale plus a sub-national one. The difference is that Canada's provincial layer is progressive and published alongside the federal scale, while Japan's inhabitant tax is broadly flat and administered separately.
What Japan has that none of the others do is a tax with an expiry date written into it. The reconstruction surtax ends in 2037 by statute, which makes it the only charge on this site whose disappearance is already law.
Four ways a Japanese estimate goes wrong
Applying the scale to gross salary. The employment income deduction comes off first and it is between ¥650,000 and ¥1,950,000. Entering gross overstates the bill for everyone.
Using the pre-reform deductions. ¥550,000 and ¥480,000 were right until 令和6. The reform raised them and moved the tax-free point from ¥1,030,000 to ¥1,600,000, and a great deal of published material has not caught up.
Forgetting the reconstruction surtax. 2.1% of the tax sounds negligible and is not: on a ¥15,000,000 salary it is a five-figure sum.
Treating the national tax as the whole bill. Inhabitant tax at roughly 10% is charged separately, lags a year, and for many salaries exceeds what this page shows.
Year-end adjustment, and why most people never file
Japanese employers run 年末調整 — the year-end adjustment — in December. The employer recomputes the year's tax on the total paid, applies the deductions the employee has declared on a set of forms, and squares the difference in the final payslip of the year.
Done properly, that ends the matter. Most employees never file a return at all, which is why the filing season from mid-February to mid-March is largely a matter for the self-employed, for people with a second source of income, and for anyone claiming something the employer could not handle.
The forms are where the money is. The 扶養控除等申告書 declares dependants, the 保険料控除申告書 declares insurance premiums, and the 基礎控除申告書 declares the information that sets the basic deduction. An employee who does not return them gets the default treatment and loses whatever they were entitled to.
Three things the year-end adjustment cannot do: medical expense deductions above the threshold, donations including ふるさと納税 where the one-stop exception does not apply, and the first year of the housing loan credit. All three need a return.
The 源泉徴収票 issued in January is the record of what happened — total pay, total deductions, tax withheld. It is the Japanese equivalent of a P60 or a W-2, and every claim starts from it.
Furusato nozei, the deduction that is really a transfer
ふるさと納税 — hometown tax — lets a taxpayer donate to a municipality of their choosing and deduct almost all of it, keeping only a ¥2,000 out-of-pocket cost, while receiving a thank-you gift from the municipality.
Economically it is not a tax break at all: it moves inhabitant tax revenue from where you live to where you donate. The taxpayer is very slightly worse off in cash and considerably better off in beef, rice and crab.
The limit depends on income and family circumstances, and exceeding it turns the excess into an ordinary donation with much less relief. Working out the ceiling is the main practical difficulty and the reason a whole industry of calculators exists around it.
Most of the relief lands on inhabitant tax rather than on national income tax, which is why it does not appear in the figure on this page and why it cannot be estimated from a national tax calculation alone.
It is worth mentioning here because it is by a wide margin the most-used discretionary tax provision in Japan, and because it illustrates the thing this page keeps returning to: the national income tax is only part of what a Japanese taxpayer is dealing with.
Resident, non-permanent resident, non-resident
Japan has three categories rather than two, and the middle one is unusual. A resident who is not a Japanese national and has had a domicile or residence in Japan for five years or less out of the past ten is a non-permanent resident.
A permanent resident for tax purposes is taxed on worldwide income. A non-resident is taxed only on Japan-source income, generally at a flat 20.4% withholding on employment income including the reconstruction surtax.
A non-permanent resident sits between: taxed on Japan-source income in full, and on foreign-source income only to the extent it is paid in Japan or remitted to Japan. That remittance rule catches people out constantly, because moving your own savings into a Japanese account can bring foreign income into charge.
The five-year clock is why the category matters to almost every foreign professional in Japan: it is generous at the start and it expires, and the change is automatic rather than announced.
This calculator applies resident rates. For a non-resident it is the wrong basis entirely, not an approximation.
What Japan taxes separately from the scale
Not everything goes through the seven bands. Japan uses 分離課税 — separate taxation — for several categories, each at its own flat rate, and none of them interacts with salary.
Listed share gains and dividends are taxed at 20.3% including the reconstruction surtax and local tax. Interest on deposits is withheld at the same rate. Real property gains split by holding period, with a higher rate for property held five years or less.
Because these are flat and separate, someone whose income is mostly investment income can face a lower effective rate than a salaried employee on the same total — which is the finding behind the new minimum tax above ¥330,000,000 of base income.
Retirement allowances have their own regime again, with a deduction that grows with years of service and only half the excess taxed. It is one of the most generous provisions in the code and it is why Japanese severance is structured the way it is.
This calculator handles employment income under the ordinary progressive scale, which is the case that matches the search almost everyone is making.
How much income tax do I pay on ¥6,000,000 in Japan?
¥314,979 of national income tax, including the 2.1% reconstruction surtax — an effective rate of 5.2% on gross salary. Inhabitant tax at roughly 10% and social insurance premiums are charged on top and are not in that figure.
What are the Japanese income tax rates?
Seven rates on taxable income: 5% to ¥1,950,000, 10% to ¥3,300,000, 20% to ¥6,950,000, 23% to ¥9,000,000, 33% to ¥18,000,000, 40% to ¥40,000,000 and 45% above. The NTA publishes them as a quick calculation table — rate times income minus a fixed deduction — rather than as bands.
How much can I earn in Japan before paying income tax?
¥1,600,000 of salary. The employment income deduction is at least ¥650,000 and the basic deduction is ¥950,000 at that level, and together they cancel the taxable amount exactly. The 令和7 reform raised this from the old ¥1,030,000 wall.
What is the 2.1% reconstruction surtax?
復興特別所得税, a special income tax charged at 2.1% of your income tax — not of your income. It runs from 2013 to 2037 and funds reconstruction after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake. It means someone in the 20% band actually faces 20.420% on their next yen.
Is inhabitant tax included?
No. 住民税 is a separate local tax of roughly 10% plus a small flat amount, charged by your prefecture and municipality on the previous year's income and collected from June. For many salaries it is comparable to the national tax, so this figure is well short of the total.
Why is my payslip lower than this?
Because social insurance — health, pension, employment and, from 40, long-term care — is withheld monthly and is not deducted here. Those premiums are also fully deductible from taxable income, so including them would reduce the national tax as well as your take-home.
Does the employment income deduction formula always give the exact answer?
Not quite. For salary below ¥6,600,000 the statute directs you to Appendix Table 5 of the Income Tax Act rather than the formula, and that table rounds in steps. The formula is what the NTA publishes as the quick method and it is what is used here, so below that level the figure can differ from the statutory one by a small amount.
Written and edited by Pablo Ruiz QuinteroSources checked September 1, 2026Rates and both deductions read off nta.go.jp on 2026-09-02