Not sure where your salary sits? The table below shows what a single employee takes home in Japan at 9 common salaries, using the same rules as the calculator above. A ¥3,000,000 salary leaves ¥2,409,562 a year, or ¥200,797 a month, which is 80% of the gross figure. At ¥20,000,000 the take-home share is 65%, or ¥1,082,576 a month.

Select a salary in the first column for its own page with the full breakdown, hourly and weekly pay. The last column shows the share of any extra pay you would keep after tax and contributions.

Two numbers describe your tax burden. The effective rate is the share of your whole salary that goes to tax and contributions. In Japan it rises from 19.7% to 35.0% across the salaries in the table above. The marginal rate is the share of your next unit of income that is taxed, and it is what matters when you consider a raise, overtime or a bonus.

The marginal rate is lowest around ¥3,000,000, where 23% of each extra amount goes to tax, and highest around ¥15,000,000, where it reaches 47%. Between those points the rate is not always a smooth climb, because allowances, credits and caps on social contributions switch on and off at different incomes.

A practical example: a 10% raise on ¥5,000,000 adds ¥500,000 to your gross pay but ¥360,694 to your take-home pay a year, so 72% of the raise reaches your account. Use the calculator and enter a bonus or overtime to see the same effect for your own numbers.

To see how the calculation works, here is a ¥5,000,000 salary for a single employee. The average full-time wage is ¥5,185,703, so this is a typical figure. The result is ¥3,902,733 a year, ¥325,228 a month or about ¥1,876.31 an hour on a 40-hour week.

The largest deduction is Social Insurance, at ¥732,750 or 14.7% of gross pay. Taken together, tax and contributions amount to 21.9% of the salary. Put another way, you work from 1 January until about 21 March each year just to cover them, and about 9 of every 40 hours you work. Credits, where they apply, show as a plus sign because they reduce the tax you owe.

Job offers are quoted per year but bills arrive monthly, so it helps to see the same salary per period. The figures below divide the ¥5,000,000 example by 12 months, 26 two-week periods, 52 weeks, 260 working days and 2,080 working hours (a 40-hour week). Your own pay schedule, hours and holidays can differ, and you can change them under More Options in the calculator.

How much of a typical paycheque survives tax in Japan? The table applies the calculator to benchmark salaries from official statistics (the sources are listed in the “Do You Earn a Good Salary?” chart above). A full-time worker on the minimum wage keeps 81% of gross pay, while the average earner keeps 78%.

Single employee, standard settings, tax year 2026.

Japanese employees are paid monthly, often with large bonuses in summer and winter. Income tax is withheld each month and corrected in an end-of-year adjustment by the employer; residence tax is billed based on last year’s income and withheld from pay from June; and social insurance premiums for health, pension, employment and nursing care are deducted automatically.

The calculator is for a salaried employee with no dependants and uses the 2026 rules.

National income tax

Progressive rates from 5% to 45%, plus a 2.1% reconstruction surtax, applied after the employment income deduction, social insurance and the basic deduction.

Residence tax

A flat 10% of taxable income charged by your prefecture and municipality.

Social insurance

Health, pension and employment insurance premiums deducted from pay, with monthly caps on the pension and health premiums.