When Resident Tax Starts in Japan: Your First Year

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

Resident tax (住民税) works on a delay: it starts in the first June that follows your first 1 January in Japan, so your first payslips here have none of it. Arrive in January and that is seventeen months away; arrive in December and it is six — or a year later still, if that stub of a first year was small enough to fall under the exemption. Until then the take-home pay is better than expected. Then, one June, a new line appears on the payslip and several thousand yen a month quietly disappears. Nothing has gone wrong.

The rule, in one paragraph

Resident tax is charged on the income you earned in the previous calendar year, and it is collected over the twelve months from the June after that year to the following May. Who charges it is decided by where you were living on 1 January of the year the collection starts. So the tax on everything you earn in 2026 is worked out in the spring of 2027 and taken out of your pay from June 2027 to May 2028.

If you arrived in Japan in April 2026, then on 1 January 2026 you were not living in any Japanese municipality and you had earned nothing here in 2025. There is nothing to charge. Your payslips from April 2026 to May 2027 have no resident tax line at all — fourteen months of it. In June 2027 the first bill lands, based on your nine months of 2026 income. In June 2028 it is recalculated on a full year and goes up again.

What it costs

Roughly 10% of your taxable income, plus a flat amount of about ¥5,000 a year. The 10% is split between the municipality (6%) and the prefecture (4%); the flat part is ¥4,000 of per-capita levy (均等割) plus ¥1,000 of forest environment tax (森林環境税), and a handful of municipalities charge a few hundred yen more. The taxable income it applies to is not quite the same as the one income tax uses — the basic exemption for resident tax is ¥430,000 rather than the ¥1,040,000 that income tax gives for 2026 — so resident tax is often the larger of the two bills for someone on an ordinary salary.

For a single person on ¥5,600,000 a year in Tokyo the resident tax is around ¥280,000, which is about ¥23,000 a month. The calculator works it out from your own numbers and shows which month it starts in, and what a ¥5 million salary takes home works one package through line by line, with and without the resident tax. A bonus is not touched by resident tax in the month it is paid, but it does raise the following year’s bill: how much of a Japanese bonus you take home has the figures.

Why the drop is not a mistake on your payslip

Two things change in the same few months of your second year, which is part of why it feels like more than it is:

• June: resident tax starts. Your employer collects it for you — this is 特別徴収, special collection — in twelve instalments. The June instalment is slightly larger than the other eleven, because the year's total is divided into twelve round hundreds of yen and June carries whatever is left over. If the whole bill comes to no more than the flat part, June takes all of it and the other eleven months take nothing (地方税法 第321条の5第1項 ただし書き).
• December of your first year: the opposite happened. Your employer ran 年末調整, the year-end adjustment, and gave you back income tax that had been over-withheld. Arriving partway through a year means the monthly tables assumed twelve months of your salary while you were only paid for part of it, so the refund is usually large. That good December makes the following June look worse than it is.

The part that catches people out: leaving Japan

The short version is below. Leaving Japan mid-year: what happens to resident tax takes the same question further — what is still owed month by month, and who pays it once you have gone.

Because the tax runs a year behind, it does not stop when you do. If you leave Japan in August, the bill running from the previous June — the one on the calendar year before this one — still has instalments left in it, and they are still owed. There are three ways that gets settled, and which one you get depends on your employer and your timing:

Lump-sum deduction from your final pay (一括徴収)

The remaining instalments of the current year's bill are taken all at once out of your last salary or your retirement payment. For someone leaving in, say, September this can be eight months of resident tax in one go, which is a memorable final payslip. Between January and April the employer is generally required to do this; between June and December it happens if you ask for it.

Paying it yourself (普通徴収)

The municipality sends you payment slips, in four instalments. Useful, except that they are sent to a Japanese address you may no longer have.

A tax agent (納税管理人)

You nominate somebody resident in Japan — often a friend, sometimes a service — to receive the paperwork and pay on your behalf. You file a 納税管理人の申告書 with the municipal office before you go. If you are leaving with a bill still outstanding, this is the option that stops it quietly turning into unpaid tax.

What is not owed is often the bigger surprise, and in your favour. Resident tax is charged on whoever was living in a Japanese municipality on 1 January. If you leave in August 2027 and are living abroad on 1 January 2028, the income you earned in Japan during 2027 is never assessed for resident tax at all — there is no June 2028 bill to come after you for. What you still owe is the instalments of the bill already assessed, the one running from June 2027 on your 2026 income; that is the amount the three routes above are about. Income tax is a separate matter and is settled either by your employer before you go or by a 準確定申告. It is worth asking your employer's payroll team which of these they are doing for you, in writing, before your last month.

Things that are often confused with it

What you can do about it

• Budget for it from the start. The simplest version: put aside about 10% of your income for the first fourteen months and the June cliff stops being a cliff.
• Do not compare offers on your first year. A twelve-month figure that has no resident tax in it flatters the job by the better part of a month's pay. The calculator shows a settled year next to your first one for that reason.
• Claim what you are entitled to. Dependents — including, with the right paperwork, family living outside Japan — reduce both taxes. So do life insurance premiums, iDeCo contributions and, if you own a home, the home-loan credit. Most of these go on the forms your employer hands out in November.
• ふるさと納税 is a resident tax mechanism. Donating to a municipality moves most of your resident tax somewhere you choose and sends you food in return. It reduces next year's bill rather than this year's, which for once works in your favour.

Questions people ask

When does resident tax start in Japan?

In the June after your first 1 January living here. It is charged on the previous calendar year’s income, so somebody who arrives in April pays none of it until June of the following year.

Why did my take-home drop in June?

Resident tax started. It is charged on last year’s income and collected in twelve instalments from June to the following May; it is not a pay cut.

Do I still pay resident tax if I leave Japan?

Yes, for any year whose 1 January you were living here: the bill you are already paying, and — if you leave between January and May — the new one issued in June after you have gone. A tax agent (納税管理人) is how that gets paid; see leaving Japan mid-year. A year whose 1 January you were no longer here for is not charged.

This is a general explanation, not advice about your situation, and the rules around leaving Japan in particular depend on dates and on your municipality. A 税理士 (licensed tax accountant) or your local 市役所 / 区役所 can tell you what applies to you.

Sources

• 地方税法 第39条・第318条 (the 1 January assessment date) and 第321条の5 (collection in twelve instalments from June), 第321条の5第2項 (一括徴収 on leaving)
• National Tax Agency — 令和8年分 源泉徴収税額表 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
• Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications — 個人住民税の概要 (the 6% / 4% split, 均等割 and 森林環境税)

See it on your own numbers