Resident Tax in Japan: How to Read the Notice (and Why Your First Year Is Different)

Sometime in your second year in Japan, an envelope from your city or ward office shows up with a tax bill in it. It is not income tax, which your employer has been withholding all along. It is resident tax, 住民税 (juminzei), and it catches a lot of people off guard because nothing arrived the year before.

Here is what that notice is, how to read it, and what to do with it.

What resident tax is

Resident tax is a local tax that pays for the services your prefecture and city provide. It has two parts:

A per-income levy (所得割), charged on your taxable income from the previous calendar year. The standard rate is 10%: 6% to your city or ward and 4% to the prefecture.
A per-capita levy (均等割), a flat amount everyone who is taxable pays regardless of income. The standard amount is ¥4,000 (¥3,000 municipal plus ¥1,000 prefectural), and since fiscal 2024 a national forest environment tax (森林環境税) of ¥1,000 a year is collected alongside it.

Those are the standard figures from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's English Guide to Metropolitan Taxes 2025. Some prefectures and municipalities add their own small surcharges, so the per-capita amount on your notice may be a little higher. Your notice shows the exact breakdown.

Why nothing arrived in your first year

Two rules explain the "surprise bill" feeling:

You pay resident tax to the municipality where you lived on January 1. The Tokyo guide puts it simply: residents living there as of January 1 are subject to the tax. Shinjuku City's English resident tax page adds that it applies to registered residents regardless of nationality.
The bill is based on last year's income. The tax you pay from June 2026 is calculated on what you earned from January to December 2025.

So if you moved to Japan in, say, April, you were not a resident on the January 1 before you arrived, and you had no Japanese income the year before. There is nothing to bill. The first notice usually arrives in the June after your first full January in Japan, and it covers the income you earned in your first year.

Low incomes can also be exempt. The thresholds depend on your household and your municipality, and the rules are set to change: the Tokyo guide notes that the income limits are being raised starting with the fiscal 2026 resident tax. If your income was small, ask your city office whether you are exempt rather than guessing.

How the tax gets paid: salary deduction or payment slips

There are two collection methods, and the one you are on decides what arrives in your mailbox.

Special collection (特別徴収), for most employees. Your employer reports your salary to your city by January 31. The city calculates the tax and sends the amount to your employer by May 31, and your employer takes it out of your pay in 12 monthly instalments from June to the following May. You receive a notice of the amount (often handed out at work with a payslip), but you do not pay anything yourself.

Ordinary collection (普通徴収), for everyone else. If you are self-employed, a freelancer, between jobs, or your employer does not deduct it, the city mails you a tax notice directly. In the Tokyo guide's example, the notice arrives in June and the tax is split into four instalments. In Tokyo's 23 wards and every other Tokyo municipality listed in the guide, those fall in June, August, October and January. Other prefectures can use different months, so go by the due dates printed on your own slips.

Reading the notice

The envelope usually contains a folded notice (納税通知書, nozei tsuchisho) and a strip of payment slips (納付書, nofusho). The things to find:

年度 (fiscal year). The tax year shown, for example 令和8年度 (fiscal 2026). This is the year you are paying in, not the income year.
所得割額 and 均等割額. The per-income and per-capita amounts described above.
年税額 (annual tax amount). The total for the year.
期別 (instalment period) and 納期限 (payment deadline). Each instalment has its own amount and due date. Slips are labelled 第1期, 第2期 and so on.
全期 or 一括 (full-year) slip. Some cities include an extra slip for paying the whole year at once by the first deadline. If you use it, you do not also pay the instalment slips.

If your notice says 普通徴収 and you expected your employer to deduct the tax, talk to your payroll team. Sometimes a job change between January and June means the city did not know where you work.

How to pay

Payment options differ by city, but a typical slip can be paid at a bank or post office counter, or at a convenience store if it has a barcode. Using Tokyo as an example, its tax guide limits convenience-store and payment-app payments to slips of ¥300,000 or less, and lists apps such as PayPay, au PAY, d払い and Rakuten Pay. Slips printed with the nationwide local-tax QR code (eL-QR) can also be paid online through the Local Tax Agency's eLTAX payment site, including by credit card. You can also set up automatic bank debit through your city office.

Pay by the date printed on each slip. Late local tax picks up a delinquent charge (延滞金) that grows with the number of days overdue. The Tokyo guide sets out the formula, and the rate goes up after the first month. Unpaid tax eventually moves on to reminders and collection action. If you cannot pay on time, contact the tax section of your city office before the deadline and ask what options they have.

Leaving Japan? Sort out resident tax first

Because resident tax is billed a year in arrears, leaving Japan does not end it. You still owe tax for any year in which you were resident on January 1.

The Shinjuku page lays out the two options:

If you leave before the notice arrives in early June, either pay the tax in advance at the city office or appoint a tax agent (納税管理人, nozei kanrinin) who will receive the notice and pay on your behalf.
If you leave after the notice has arrived, pay the remaining balance before you go or appoint a tax agent to pay it.

A tax agent is a person (or company) with an address in Japan. You file a notification at your city office before you leave. Ask your city what form it uses; most have a standard one.

Income tax is a separate system run by the National Tax Agency, with its own tax agent notification. The NTA's page on procedures before departing from Japan covers that side.

Quick checklist

Your first resident tax notice usually arrives in June of your second calendar year in Japan.
Employees normally have it deducted from pay from June to May; others pay four instalments from a mailed notice.
The notice shows the fiscal year, the per-income and per-capita amounts, and a deadline for each slip.
Rates and exempt thresholds can vary by municipality, and your notice is the authority on your own amount.
Before leaving Japan, pay what you owe or appoint a tax agent.

Getting through the paperwork

The resident tax notice is dense even for Japanese readers. It is a grid of kanji, era-year dates and figures, and nothing on it is in English. If you want to check what a notice is asking for, Jozu lets you take a photo of the letter and get it explained in plain English, with the payment deadlines pulled out so you can set reminders. And for anything specific to your own tax, your city office's tax section (税務課 or 課税課) is the place to ask. Many of them have English support or interpreters.