¥5 Million Salary in Japan: Take-Home Pay (2026)

Last updated: 6 October 2026 · figures for the 2026 tax year (令和8年分)

A ¥5,000,000 package in Tokyo pays about ¥328,522 a month once the pension, health insurance, employment insurance, income tax and resident tax have come out — ¥3,942,260 over a settled year, or 78.8% of what the offer letter says. The missing 21.2% is not all tax: more than two thirds of it is social insurance, and the biggest single line on the payslip is the pension.

What these figures assume

Change any of these and the number moves. Every figure here came out of the calculator on this site.

• An employee of one Japanese company, insured through 協会けんぽ rather than a company health society, with the 扶養控除等申告書 filed.
• Single, no dependents, under 40 — so no long-term care insurance yet.
• Working in Tokyo, in an ordinary business (construction, farming and brewing pay a little more employment insurance).
• The whole package paid as twelve equal monthly salaries, with no bonus and no commuting allowance.
• A settled year — the third year onwards, once resident tax is being charged on a full previous year. Your first two years are higher, and a section below says by how much.
• Nothing claimed that you have to claim for yourself: no iDeCo, no life insurance premiums, no home-loan credit, no ふるさと納税.

One piece of arithmetic first: the calculator works from a monthly figure, so ¥5,000,000 a year becomes ¥416,667 a month and the gross adds back up to ¥5,000,004. The four yen matter only because everything here is exact to the yen.

What comes out of ¥416,667 a month

Health insurance and the pension are not percentages of your salary but of a grade — 標準報酬月額 — that your salary falls into, ¥410,000 here. Health insurance takes 10.08% of it in Tokyo for 2026 (9.85% for the prefecture plus the 0.23% child-care support levy) and the pension 18.3%; your employer pays half of each, and the table shows your half. Employment insurance is the one line that really is a straight percentage of pay, 0.5%. Income tax is charged in bands — 5% up to ¥1,950,000 of taxable income, 10% above — and this salary does not reach the second: ¥1,796,000 is left after the employment income deduction, the basic exemption and the social insurance above, all of it taxed at 5%. The 2.1% reconstruction surcharge (復興特別所得税) falls on the tax rather than the income and is already inside the figure. Resident tax (住民税) is roughly 10% of a slightly differently calculated income, plus a flat part of about ¥5,000 a year.

The monthly column is the year divided by twelve, which is not quite what a payslip says. The withholding table is an estimate: it takes ¥12,220 of income tax a month here, and December’s 年末調整 hands ¥55,040 back — together, the ¥91,600 in the table. Resident tax is not flat either. The year’s bill runs in twelve instalments from June and June carries the rounding, so it is ¥20,800 once and ¥20,200 eleven times. Only the insurance lines hold still, and they too step when the rates are reset each spring — a month later on the payslip if your employer deducts the previous month’s premiums, as most do.

¥3,000,000 to ¥10,000,000, on the same assumptions

A round package does not always divide by twelve into whole yen, so the gross the calculator actually works with is ¥3,999,996 for ¥4 million, ¥5,000,004 for ¥5 million, ¥8,000,004 for ¥8 million and ¥9,999,996 for ¥10 million. The take-home figures are the ones it reports for those grosses, to the yen.

The share taken climbs, but gently: doubling the package from ¥5,000,000 to ¥10,000,000 moves it from 21.2% to 27.3%, so the second ¥5,000,000 is worth about ¥3,330,000 in hand against the first one’s ¥3,940,000. The pension line, meanwhile, stops growing — contributions are capped at a grade of ¥650,000 a month, which is why ¥8 million and ¥10 million both pay exactly ¥713,700 a year into it. The ¥10,000,000 package has a walkthrough of its own, and so do the three-million, four-million and six-million packages.

Your first two years are higher, and the drop is not a pay cut

If you have just arrived, the figure on your payslip will be bigger than ¥328,522 for a while. Resident tax is charged on the previous calendar year and collected from the June after it, so a new arrival has none of it at all to begin with. On this ¥5,000,000, arriving in April 2026:

• The first twelve months: ¥4,190,400, with no resident tax in any of them. That total already includes the ¥60,180 the December 年末調整 hands back — it is in the figure, not on top of it.
• Months 13 to 24: ¥4,051,060. Resident tax starts in June 2027, but it is assessed on nine months of 2026 income, so it is a small bill.
• Months 25 to 36: ¥3,955,860. That small bill runs until May 2028; the first assessment on a full calendar year of Japanese income arrives in June 2028.
• A settled year, every month of it on a full-year bill: ¥3,942,260.

Those dates are an illustration rather than a forecast: all four windows use the 2026 rules, insurance rates are reset every spring, and the raised deductions behind 2026 and 2027 are legislated to change again from 2028. The shape is the part to take from it — about ¥250,000 a year of drift downwards on a salary that never changed, which is why a first-year figure is a poor basis for comparing two offers. The timing is in why your first payslips in Japan have no resident tax, and what happens to the bill if you leave before it is paid is in leaving Japan mid-year.

If the package includes a bonus

A 年収 figure in a Japanese job advert normally means the whole year including bonus, not twelve times the monthly salary. Splitting the same ¥5,000,000 the common way — twelve months of ¥312,500 plus two bonuses of ¥625,000 — gives a take-home of ¥3,921,736 a year, around ¥20,500 less than the same money paid as salary alone.

That is not because bonuses are taxed harder — the income tax on the bonus version is ¥1,200 lower. It is the insurance grades. A bonus is insured at the full rate on 標準賞与額, with no grade to round it down, while a ¥312,500 salary rounds up into the ¥320,000 grade where ¥416,667 rounded down into ¥410,000. Together those add ¥24,120 of social insurance over the year. At other salaries the grades round the other way, so the gap is not a rule; what is worth keeping is that an advert quoting 年収 already has the bonus inside it. What comes out of a single bonus payment, line by line, is in how much of a Japanese bonus you take home.

What moves the figure most

• A dependent spouse with no income of their own: ¥3,994,660 a year, ¥52,400 more. A dependent child of 16 or over, or a dependent parent, adds more again. A child under 16 does not — that deduction was replaced by the child allowance (児童手当) — though they still count towards the resident-tax exemption thresholds. A relative living outside Japan has an extra test to pass before any of it applies.
• Anything you claim yourself: iDeCo contributions, life insurance premiums and large medical expenses are deductions — they cut the income both taxes are charged on. The home-loan credit is not a deduction but a credit against the income tax itself, and only the part the income tax cannot absorb carries over to resident tax, up to a cap. Most of these go on the forms your employer hands out in November.

Your age and your prefecture move it too, and both are answered below.

Questions people ask

Does the ¥5,000,000 in the job advert include the bonus?

If the advert gives a 年収 or an “annual package”, yes — that is the whole year with the bonus in it. If it gives a 月給 or a monthly salary and mentions bonuses separately, the package is larger than twelve times that figure. The 年収 is the number to line two offers up on.

I am 40 or over. How much does that change?

By ¥33,952 a year, for as long as you are 40 to 64. Long-term care insurance is 1.62% of your insurance grade, split with your employer, so ¥3,321 a month comes out of your side — bringing ¥5,000,000 down to ¥3,908,308 a year, or ¥325,692 a month. It starts in the month you turn 40. What happens at 65 is that the payroll deduction stops, not the premium: from then on your municipality charges you directly, out of your pension if that comes to ¥180,000 a year or more and by payment slip or direct debit if it does not.

Is the answer different outside Tokyo?

Barely. The pension rate, employment insurance and income tax are national, and resident tax is about 10% everywhere — municipalities differ by a few hundred yen a year in the flat part. Health insurance is the only line set per prefecture, and the spread across all 47 is 1.34 points. On ¥5,000,000, Osaka (10.36% with the child-care levy, against Tokyo’s 10.08%) costs ¥5,888 a year; Niigata, the cheapest, saves ¥13,244.

This is a general explanation and an estimate, not advice about your situation. Company health societies (健康保険組合) set their own rates, a salary above ¥20,000,000 falls outside 年末調整 and needs a return of your own, and foreign-source income is a separate question. A 税理士 (licensed tax accountant) is the person to ask about any of it.

Sources

• National Tax Agency — 令和8年分 源泉徴収税額表 (the monthly withholding table and the bonus rate table) and 令和8年度税制改正による所得税の基礎控除の引上げ等について
• Japan Health Insurance Association — 令和8年度の都道府県単位保険料率 (Tokyo 9.85%, Osaka 10.13%, Niigata 9.21% — all before the 0.23% child-care support levy — and long-term care 1.62%)
• Japan Pension Service — 令和8年度 厚生年金保険料額表 (18.3%, capped at a ¥650,000 grade)
• Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare — 令和8年度 雇用保険料率 (0.5% for an employee in an ordinary business)
• Local Tax Act (地方税法) 第39条・第318条 on the 1 January assessment date, and 第321条の5 on collection in twelve instalments from June
• Long-Term Care Insurance Act (介護保険法) 第129条・第135条 on premiums from 65 and the ¥180,000-a-year pension threshold for collecting them at source

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