Freelancer & Sole Proprietor Take-Home Pay Calculator (Japan)

Calculate take-home income after National Health Insurance, National Pension, income tax, and resident tax are deducted from your business revenue and expenses. Built for Japan's self-employed, unlike the employee-focused "Net Salary Calculator".

National Health Insurance rate model (FY2026, Tokyo special wards)

The income-based rates, per-capita amounts, and caps this tool uses as its baseline. Check your own municipality's published rates for an accurate figure.

Category Income-based rate Per-capita amount Annual cap
Medical portion 7.51% 47,600 JPY 670,000 JPY
Elderly support portion 2.80% 17,600 JPY 260,000 JPY
Long-term care portion (age 40–64) 2.43% 17,800 JPY 170,000 JPY
Child-rearing support portion (new in FY2026) 0.27% 1,873 JPY 30,000 JPY

Source: based on published Tokyo special-ward materials, e.g. Shinjuku City's "How National Health Insurance premiums are calculated (FY2026)".

Tips

  • The employee-focused "Net Salary Calculator" assumes Employees' Health Insurance and Employees' Pension split with an employer. The biggest difference for freelancers is that National Health Insurance and National Pension are paid entirely out of pocket.
  • To apply the ¥650,000 Blue Return deduction, you must meet requirements such as e-Tax electronic filing or electronic bookkeeping. Otherwise the deduction drops to ¥100,000, or to nothing under a White Return.
  • National Health Insurance premiums are based on last year's income, so in your first year of business they're still based on your prior salary or other income — not yet your freelance earnings.
  • More dependents raise the National Health Insurance per-capita and child-rearing support charges, but this is partly offset by dependent deductions on income tax and resident tax.

FAQ

It's the sum of an income-based charge — last year's income minus a ¥430,000 basic deduction, multiplied by the rate for the medical, elderly-support, long-term-care (age 40–64), and child-rearing-support (new in FY2026) portions — plus a flat per-capita amount based on household size. Both the rates and per-capita amounts are set by each municipality.

Employees' Pension is generally more favorable on a simple comparison, since premiums are split with an employer and it pays a larger benefit later. However, freelancers can supplement their National Pension with the National Pension Fund or iDeCo (individual defined-contribution pension) to design their own retirement savings.

A Blue Return lets you claim a special deduction of ¥650,000 (or ¥550,000/¥100,000) that lowers your tax burden, but requires double-entry bookkeeping and attaching financial statements to your tax return. A White Return needs simpler bookkeeping but has no special deduction. The larger your business, the more the Blue Return's benefits tend to outweigh the extra bookkeeping effort.

Many municipalities offer reduction programs for a sharp drop in income from the prior year, or for involuntary unemployment. Incorporating as a small ("micro") company and re-enrolling in employees' social insurance can also lower the burden in some cases, but you'll need to weigh that against the costs of running a company.
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Side Note — The freelancer's "social insurance wall"

People who leave salaried employment to freelance are often shocked by how heavy social insurance premiums feel. As an employee, health insurance and pension premiums were split with an employer; as a freelancer, National Health Insurance and National Pension are, in principle, paid entirely out of pocket. Even at the same income level, take-home pay after going independent often feels much lower — largely because the employer's matching share disappears.

National Health Insurance caps its premiums (賦課限度額) to soften the "regressive" effect where high earners would otherwise pay a shrinking share of their income, while keeping the system's finances predictable. Starting FY2026, a new child-rearing support portion was added on top of the medical, elderly-support, and long-term-care portions, raising the combined cap to ¥1.13 million. It was introduced as a way to fund childcare policy broadly through the working generation's health insurance system.

To soften this burden, Japan offers freelancer-oriented "supplementary pension and retirement" schemes: the Small Enterprise Mutual Aid, the National Pension Fund, and iDeCo (individual defined-contribution pension). Contributions to all three are fully deductible from taxable income, letting freelancers build future savings and reduce their tax burden without increasing their social insurance premiums — a distinctly different lever from an employee's Employees' Pension.

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