Japan Year-End Tax Adjustment Refund Calculator (2026)
Estimate your Japan year-end tax adjustment refund or extra tax for 2026, step by step per the NTA. Covers the ¥1.04M basic deduction, spouse, dependents, insurance and housing loan credit.
Enter the amounts from your withholding slip or pay slips to estimate how much income tax you will get back (or have additionally deducted) in the December year-end tax adjustment (nenmatsu chōsei, 年末調整). For tax year 2026 (Reiwa 8), changes such as the higher basic deduction are settled all at once in the year-end adjustment, so many people will receive a larger refund than usual. Everything you enter is calculated in your browser and never sent anywhere.
Refund and additional tax simulation
Dependent and other deduction amounts for 2026
| Type of deduction | Deduction (per person) |
|---|---|
| General dependents (ages 16–18 and 23–69) | ¥380,000 |
| Specified dependents (ages 19–22) | ¥630,000 |
| Elderly dependents (70 or older, other than cohabiting elderly parents) | ¥480,000 |
| Elderly dependents (cohabiting elderly parents) | ¥580,000 |
| Person with a disability | ¥270,000 |
| Person with a special disability | ¥400,000 |
| Cohabiting person with a special disability | ¥750,000 |
| Widow | ¥270,000 |
| Single parent | ¥350,000 |
| Working student | ¥270,000 |
| Basic deduction (your total income ¥4.89 million or less) | ¥1,040,000 |
| Basic deduction (over ¥4.89 million up to ¥6.55 million / over ¥6.55 million up to ¥23.5 million) | ¥670,000 / ¥620,000 |
Source: National Tax Agency, “How to Do the Year-End Adjustment for 2026 (Reiwa 8),” p.56. From 2026, the income requirement for dependents is total income of ¥620,000 or less (an annual salary of ¥1.36 million or less if salary is the only income).
Quick calculation table of income tax for the 2026 year-end adjustment
| Taxable salary income (A) | Calculated income tax |
|---|---|
| ¥1,950,000 or less | (A) × 5% |
| Over ¥1,950,000 up to ¥3,300,000 | (A) × 10% − ¥97,500 |
| Over ¥3,300,000 up to ¥6,950,000 | (A) × 20% − ¥427,500 |
| Over ¥6,950,000 up to ¥9,000,000 | (A) × 23% − ¥636,000 |
| Over ¥9,000,000 up to ¥18,000,000 | (A) × 33% − ¥1,536,000 |
| Over ¥18,000,000 up to ¥18,050,000 | (A) × 40% − ¥2,796,000 |
Source: National Tax Agency, “How to Do the Year-End Adjustment for 2026 (Reiwa 8),” p.55. Taxable salary income is rounded down to the nearest ¥1,000. The housing loan credit is subtracted from the resulting tax, the remainder is multiplied by 102.1%, and the result rounded down to the nearest ¥100 is the year-end adjusted annual tax.
What is the year-end tax adjustment refund calculation?
The year-end tax adjustment (nenmatsu chōsei, 年末調整) is the procedure in which the income tax provisionally withheld from your monthly salary and bonuses is settled in December against the correct tax for the whole year. The correct tax is found by subtracting the employment income deduction from your total salary, then subtracting income deductions such as social insurance premiums, life insurance premiums, and the spouse and dependent deductions, and applying the tax rate to the resulting taxable income. If the total withheld is more than this tax, the difference is refunded; if it is less, the shortfall is additionally deducted from your December or January pay.
This simulator reproduces, step by step, the procedure and tables in the National Tax Agency’s “How to Do the Year-End Adjustment for 2026 (Reiwa 8)” that employers use. The salary amount after the employment income deduction is taken from the brackets of the year-end adjustment lookup table rather than a formula, and the calculation follows the same order through rounding taxable income down to the nearest ¥1,000, the 102.1% that includes the special reconstruction income tax, and rounding the annual tax down to the nearest ¥100. In 2026 the basic deduction rises to up to ¥1.04 million and the minimum employment income deduction to ¥740,000, and because these changes are settled all at once in the December year-end adjustment, refunds tend to be larger than usual this year.
Sources used in this calculation
Statutory figures such as tax and insurance rates come from the public bodies listed below. They change when the law is revised, so please also check the primary source before relying on the result for an important decision.
- Basic deduction and employment income deduction — National Tax Agency (国税庁) Effective 2026-01 to 2027-12 ／ Last checked 2026-10-17
- Employment income deduction (minimum ¥740,000 for 2026 and 2027) — National Tax Agency (国税庁) Effective 2026-01 to 2027-12 ／ Last checked 2026-10-17
- Year-end tax adjustment procedure, deduction amounts and tax rate table (2026 edition of the NTA guide) — National Tax Agency (国税庁) Effective 2026-01 to 2026-12 ／ Last checked 2026-10-28
How to use the year-end adjustment simulator
- Enter your total salary and withheld tax Enter your total salary and bonuses from January to December and the sum of the “income tax” lines on your pay slips. If you have not received December’s pay yet, you can use your actual figures through November plus your expected December amount.
- Enter social insurance and insurance deductions Add any National Pension or iDeCo contributions you paid yourself to the total social insurance premiums deducted from your pay. For life insurance and earthquake insurance, enter the deduction amount, not the premiums paid.
- Choose your spouse and dependents Enter your spouse’s age category and total income, and the number of dependents in each age category. Children aged 19–22 who are no longer dependents are entered as “specified relatives” with their income.
- Check the result and breakdown The refund or additional tax is shown prominently, followed by a breakdown in the same order as the withholding ledger. You can compare it with the amounts on the withholding slip your employer gives you.
Tips for getting more out of it
- From 2026, if you have a dependent under 23, the cap on the general category of the new life insurance premium deduction rises to ¥60,000. Work out the deduction with your insurer’s deduction certificate and the life insurance premium deduction calculator before entering it.
- The medical expense deduction and furusato nōzei hometown tax donations (the donation deduction) are not settled in the year-end adjustment. To get that refund you need to file a tax return (a refund return), which can be submitted for five years starting January 1 of the following year (with the one-stop special exception, furusato nōzei needs no return and is deducted from the following year’s resident tax instead).
- The housing loan tax credit requires a tax return only in the first year; from the second year onward you can receive it through the year-end adjustment by submitting the application form to your employer.
- Some employers settle the year-end adjustment without withholding tax from the bonus paid in December. In that case, entering your figures without adding December’s income tax will bring you closer to the actual settlement.
When the year-end adjustment simulation is useful
Estimating your December take-home pay
The refund is usually added to your December or January pay. You can get a sense of how much will come back before planning your year-end spending.
Deciding how your spouse or children work
When your spouse’s annual salary goes over ¥1.36 million or ¥1.69 million, or a university-age child’s part-time earnings increase, you can compare how much the deductions shrink and how your refund changes.
Checking your year-end adjustment result
Compare the “withheld tax amount” on the withholding slip from your employer with the year-end adjusted annual tax in this tool to check for unreported dependents or forgotten insurance deductions.
Seeing the effect of iDeCo or life insurance
You can estimate how much income tax comes back if you increase your iDeCo contributions or insurance premiums. The effect on residence tax can be checked with the residence tax calculator.
Year-end tax adjustment glossary
- Year-end adjusted annual tax
- The total of income tax and special reconstruction income tax for the year, finalized in the year-end adjustment (nenchō nenzeigaku, 年調年税額). It is found by multiplying the year-end adjusted income tax by 102.1% and rounding down to the nearest ¥100. This is the amount shown in the “withheld tax amount” box of your withholding slip.
- Salary amount after the employment income deduction
- Your total salary minus the employment income deduction — in effect, the “income” from your salary. In the year-end adjustment, amounts below ¥6.6 million are taken from the brackets of the National Tax Agency’s lookup table.
- Income amount adjustment deduction
- A deduction available to people with a salary over ¥8.5 million who, for example, have a dependent under 23 or a family member with a special disability. (Salary − ¥8.5 million) × 10%, up to a maximum of ¥150,000, is subtracted from salary income.
- Special deduction for specified relatives
- A deduction introduced from tax year 2025. Even when a child aged 19–22 or similar is no longer a dependent because their total income is over ¥620,000 and up to ¥1.23 million, you can deduct up to ¥630,000 depending on their income.
- Special spouse deduction
- A deduction available on a sliding scale when your spouse’s total income exceeds ¥620,000, making the spouse deduction unavailable, up to a spouse income of ¥1.33 million. It cannot be claimed if your own total income exceeds ¥10 million.
- Total income
- The sum of income such as salary income and business income. If you only have salary, it equals the “salary amount after the employment income deduction (after adjustment deduction)” and is used to determine brackets such as those for the basic deduction and the spouse deduction.
Frequently asked questions about year-end adjustment refunds
Side Note — The year-end tax adjustment is a uniquely Japanese system
The year-end tax adjustment, in which employers settle a full year of their employees’ income tax, was introduced in the complete revision of the Income Tax Act in 1947 (Showa 22). Withholding tax on salaries had begun earlier, in 1940, but alongside this revision’s adoption of a self-assessment system, a framework took shape in which employers handle everything from verifying deductions to the final settlement for salaried workers, so that most company employees do not need to file a tax return.
This places a considerable burden on employers: the National Tax Agency’s “How to Do the Year-End Adjustment” is a 64-page booklet for 2026. The lookup table for the salary amount after the employment income deduction is set out in the law itself as Appended Table 5 of the Income Tax Act, and from ¥2.2 million up to (but not including) ¥6.6 million the amounts are fixed in ¥4,000 brackets (from ¥6.6 million a formula applies, down to the yen). As a result, within the same bracket in that range your salary income stays the same even if your pay differs by a few thousand yen.
For 2026, the reform took an unusual form: it came into effect on December 1 and is settled all at once in the year-end adjustment. Because the revision of the withholding tax tables applies only from the following year, withholding during 2026 continues at the old levels, and the difference is added on top of this winter’s refunds in one go.