Japan "Income Wall" Calculator (¥1.03M/1.06M/1.30M/1.50M Walls)
Enter your annual income to see how crossing Japan's "income wall" thresholds (¥1.03M/1.23M, ¥1.06M, ¥1.30M, ¥1.50M) changes your take-home pay, with a chart. Reflects the 2025 tax reform and the 2026 rule change.
The 4 "income walls" at a glance
What changes at each income threshold, why, and who it affects.
| Wall | Amount | What happens | Who it affects |
|---|---|---|---|
| The 1.03M/1.23M yen wall (103万/123万円の壁, income tax & spousal deduction) | ¥1.03M (through tax year 2024) / ¥1.23M (from tax year 2025) | The worker starts owing income tax, and the spouse loses the full spousal deduction (配偶者控除). The 2025 tax reform raised the combined basic + salary-income deduction floor, so the threshold became ¥1.23 million from the 2025 tax year onward. | Part-time/temporary workers who want to stay within a spouse's or parent's tax dependency |
| The 1.06 million yen wall (106万円の壁, social insurance) | ¥1.06 million | At employers with 51+ employees, exceeding ¥1.06 million (roughly: 20+ hours/week and ¥88,000+/month) removes dependent status, so the worker must start paying their own social insurance premiums. A rule change scheduled for October 2026 is expected to abolish this yen-based threshold entirely, replacing it with a pure 20-hours-per-week rule. | Part-time workers at companies with 51 or more employees |
| The 1.30 million yen wall (130万円の壁, social insurance) | ¥1.30 million | At employers not subject to the ¥1.06M rule, exceeding ¥1.30 million removes dependent status, requiring the worker to pay their own health insurance and national pension premiums directly. Because there is no ¥1.06M-tier cushioning, the drop in take-home pay tends to be larger. | Part-time workers at smaller companies (50 or fewer employees), etc. |
| The 1.50 million yen wall (150万円の壁, spousal special deduction) | ¥1.50 million | Beyond this point, the spouse's special spousal deduction (配偶者特別控除) starts phasing down gradually from its maximum. Unlike the ¥1.06M/¥1.30M cliffs, this is a gentle taper, and it affects the spouse's tax bill, not the worker's own take-home pay. | Households concerned about the spouse's tax burden (spousal special deduction) |
Based on published guidance from Japan's National Tax Agency (income tax rates, spousal deductions) and Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (social insurance coverage expansion for short-time workers), as of July 2026.
Tips
- The old ¥1.03 million wall became the ¥1.23 million wall under the 2025 tax reform. Plenty of information online still cites ¥1.03 million — use ¥1.23 million for tax year 2025 onward.
- The ¥1.06 million wall is expected to be abolished as a yen-based threshold in October 2026. After that, social insurance enrollment will be decided purely by whether you work 20+ hours a week, making income-based adjustments moot.
- The ¥1.06 million rule mainly applies at companies with 51 or more employees, so whether your personal "social insurance wall" is ¥1.06 million or ¥1.30 million depends on your employer's size.
- The ¥1.06M/¥1.30M walls are cliffs: social insurance premiums apply to your entire income, not just the amount over the threshold. A tiny raise that pushes you just over the line can actually shrink your take-home pay.
- The ¥1.50 million wall affects your spouse's tax bill, not your own take-home pay — if your goal is purely maximizing your own net income, the ¥1.06M/¥1.30M walls matter more.
Frequently asked questions
Side Note — why are there so many "walls"?
The phrase "income wall" bundles together several unrelated systems: income tax (¥1.03M → ¥1.23M), social insurance (¥1.06M and ¥1.30M), and the spousal special deduction (¥1.50M). Each is governed by different laws and different ministries — income tax by the National Tax Agency, social insurance by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and the Japan Pension Service — so the thresholds were set independently, at different times, for different reasons, which is why the numbers don't line up neatly.
The 2025 reform that raised ¥1.03 million to ¥1.23 million was meant to catch up the basic and salary-income deductions, which had been frozen for years despite inflation. The ¥1.06 million wall, by contrast, comes from a separate policy goal — expanding social insurance coverage to short-time workers so they build up better pension entitlements — and it's set to be revised again in October 2026, dropping the yen threshold entirely in favor of an hours-only test.
The biggest practical problem with having multiple walls is that the "tax wall" and the "social insurance wall" hit your take-home pay very differently. Income tax is a gentle slope that only taxes the amount above the threshold, while social insurance is a cliff — the moment you enroll, roughly 15% is deducted from your entire income. Both get called "walls," but in terms of household impact, the social insurance walls (¥1.06M/¥1.30M) are in a different league.
The figures in this tool are a simplified illustration meant to convey the shape of these thresholds, not exact payroll numbers. Actual social insurance premiums vary in fine detail by standard monthly remuneration brackets and by prefecture-specific health insurance rates, and income tax depends on other deductions such as the spousal deduction and social insurance premium deduction. If you're planning your work hours around these walls, confirm the current, precise figures with your employer's payroll department or the pension office.