Guide
Japan's inheritance tax for foreigners: the rule is in the visa, not the passport
Whether Japan reaches assets that have never been near Japan does not turn on nationality. It turns on which of two appended tables of the Immigration Act a status of residence appears in — and on a definition that was quietly rewritten in 2021.
Published · Updated · Checked against Japanese primary sources on 7 August 2026
Written by SHINWA CREATIVE, K.K., a welding and metalwork company in Miyagi Prefecture
There are four kinds of taxpayer, not two
Japan's inheritance tax — sozoku zei (相続税) — is charged on the person who receives, not on the estate. The question that decides almost everything else is which of four categories that person falls into, because two of them are taxed on property anywhere in the world and two only on property in Japan.
Article 1-3(1) of the Inheritance Tax Act lists the four. Article 2 then does the work in two short sentences: categories (i) and (ii) are taxed on the whole of what they receive; categories (iii) and (iv) are taxed only on what they receive that is located in Japan.
第二条 第一条の三第一項第一号又は第二号の規定に該当する者については、その者が相続又は遺贈により取得した財産の全部に対し、相続税を課する。２ 第一条の三第一項第三号又は第四号の規定に該当する者については、その者が相続又は遺贈により取得した財産でこの法律の施行地にあるものに対し、相続税を課する。One note on wording before we go further. Where this page says visa — in its headline, and where the plain word reads better — it means zairyu shikaku (在留資格), a status of residence: the permission to be in Japan and to do a particular thing here. A visa in the strict sense is the sticker a consulate issues before you travel, and it is not what any of the provisions below turn on. Everywhere the distinction could change the answer, we use status of residence.
Two words carry the structure. The first is jusho (住所) — roughly, the place where a person's life is centred. It is not the same as a visa and not the same as an address on a card. The second is ichiji kyojusha (一時居住者), a temporary resident, which is a defined term and the subject of the next two sections.
| Category | Who it is | What is taxed |
|---|---|---|
| Art.1-3(1)(i) | Has a jusho in Japan when the property is acquired. And is either not a temporary resident, or is one, but the deceased was neither a foreign decedent nor a non-resident decedent. | Worldwide |
| Art.1-3(1)(ii) | No jusho in Japan. And is either a Japanese national who had a jusho here at some point in the last ten years, or — where the deceased was neither a foreign decedent nor a non-resident decedent — a Japanese national who never did, or a non-national. | Worldwide |
| Art.1-3(1)(iii) | Takes Japan-situs property, has a jusho in Japan, and falls outside (i) | Japan only |
| Art.1-3(1)(iv) | Takes Japan-situs property, has no jusho in Japan, and falls outside (ii) | Japan only |
Read the carve-outs rather than the headings. Categories (iii) and (iv) are residual: nobody is put in them directly. A person lands there by being pushed out of (i) or (ii), and the thing that pushes them out is the bracketed exclusion for a deceased person who was a gaikokujin hisozokunin (外国人被相続人) or a hikyoju hisozokunin (非居住被相続人).
Table 1 and Table 2: the split that decides everything
Here is the definition that the whole structure hangs on, and the single most consequential clause in it is the bracket:
一 一時居住者 相続開始の時において在留資格（出入国管理及び難民認定法（昭和二十六年政令第三百十九号）別表第一（在留資格）の上欄の在留資格をいう。次号及び次条第三項において同じ。）を有する者であつて当該相続の開始前十五年以内においてこの法律の施行地に住所を有していた期間の合計が十年以下であるものをいう。For the purposes of this Act, "status of residence" means a status in the upper column of Appended Table 1 of the Immigration Act. Not any status of residence. Table 1.
The Immigration Act splits statuses into two appended tables on a principle that has nothing to do with tax. Table 1 lists statuses defined by what you may do here — teaching, engineering, running a business, studying, accompanying a family member. Table 2 lists four statuses defined by who you are:
別表第二（…関係） 在留資格 本邦において有する身分又は地位永住者 法務大臣が永住を認める者日本人の配偶者等 日本人の配偶者若しくは特別養子又は日本人の子として出生した者永住者の配偶者等 永住者等の配偶者又は永住者等の子として本邦で出生しその後引き続き本邦に在留している者定住者 法務大臣が特別な理由を考慮し一定の在留期間を指定して居住を認める者The consequence runs the opposite way to most people's intuition about permanent residence. A person holding a Table 1 status can be a temporary resident, and a temporary resident is carved out of the worldwide categories in the right circumstances. A person holding permanent residence — 永住者, which is in Table 2 — cannot be a temporary resident at all, because Table 2 is not what the definition points at. The same is true of a spouse of a Japanese national.
The counter-intuitive part
Getting permanent residence is the goal of a great many people living in Japan, and it is a good thing to have for almost every purpose. For this particular tax it moves a person into the worldwide net rather than out of it, because it takes them out of a definition that only reaches Table 1 statuses. Whether that matters in a given case depends on the assets, and on the deceased, and it is not something we can work out for anyone — but it is worth knowing that the direction is the one it is.
Special permanent residents are outside both tables
tokubetsu eijusha (特別永住者) — special permanent residents — are outside both tables, because they are outside the Immigration Act's scheme of statuses. The status is defined by who qualified under the post-war legislation the 1991 act names, not by a description of any population, and we have not measured that population. Their position comes from a separate 1991 act, and that act says what happens to any status of residence they held:
２ …この場合において、当該許可を受けた者に係る在留資格及び在留期間の決定は、その効力を失う。That provision governs only one of the three routes into the status, so it is worth setting all three out rather than generalising from it. Article 5 covers a person who currently holds a Table 2 status other than permanent residence, and paragraph 2 above is what happens to that status. Article 4 covers a descendant who comes to be in Japan without going through the landing procedure at all — typically by being born here — and so never acquired a status of residence in the first place. Article 3 covers those who already qualified when the act commenced in 1991, and it defines them by reference to residence or permission under earlier post-war legislation, or to a status in the upper column of Table 2 of the Immigration Act as it then stood.
A definition elsewhere in the Immigration Act is consistent with that reading, though it sits in the refugee provisions and is not addressed to this question. Where the Act needs to describe a foreign national holding no status of residence, it lists special permanent residents separately from Table 1 and Table 2 holders rather than inside either:
…在留資格未取得外国人（別表第一又は別表第二の上欄の在留資格をもつて本邦に在留する者、一時庇護のための上陸の許可を受けた者で当該許可書に記載された期間を経過していないもの及び特別永住者以外の者をいう。以下同じ。）…What the three routes have in common is the thing that matters here: none of them runs through Appended Table 1. Since both definitions in the Inheritance Tax Act — 一時居住者 and 外国人被相続人 — require a Table 1 status, and the bracket in Article 1-3(3)(i) carries that meaning into the next item as well, a special permanent resident appears to fall outside both, in the same way as a Table 2 holder. We are reading the definitions rather than reporting a ruling on the point.
The two ten-year tests are not the same test
Two different ten-year periods appear in Article 1-3, they measure different things, and they sit in different places. Conflating them is easy and changes the answer.
| Temporary resident test | Non-resident heir test | |
|---|---|---|
| Where | Art.1-3(3)(i) — the definition | Art.1-3(1)(ii)(a) — the category itself |
| Who it is about | The person receiving, while they hold a Table 1 status and have a jusho in Japan | A Japanese national receiving while having no jusho in Japan |
| The window | Fifteen years before the death | Ten years before the death |
| What is measured | The total of all periods with a jusho in Japan, added up | Whether there was a jusho in Japan at any point |
| Passing means | Ten years or less in total, over fifteen | Having had no jusho at all in the ten years |
The first is a fifteen-year window with a ten-year budget, and the periods are aggregated — three years, then a gap, then eight years totals eleven years, and fails. The second is a plain ten-year look-back asking a yes-or-no question. A phrase like "the ten year rule" covers both and distinguishes neither.
What actually changed in 2018 and 2021
This part of the Act was amended twice in recent memory, and the second amendment is the one that matters most to a foreign family living in Japan. We took the text of Article 1-3 from e-Gov's point-in-time service on five dates and compared the definitions paragraph directly, rather than relying on summaries of the reforms.
1 April 2018: the non-resident decedent definition was cut down
Before that date, 非居住被相続人 — a deceased person with no jusho in Japan at death — required, for one of its two limbs, both that the person had held a jusho here at some point in the previous ten years and that their aggregate jusho periods over fifteen years came to ten or less. From 1 April 2018 that second condition disappeared. The limb now reads simply:
三 非居住被相続人 相続開始の時においてこの法律の施行地に住所を有していなかつた当該相続に係る被相続人であつて、当該相続の開始前十年以内のいずれかの時においてこの法律の施行地に住所を有していたことがあるもののうちそのいずれの時においても日本国籍を有していなかつたもの又は当該相続の開始前十年以内のいずれの時においてもこの法律の施行地に住所を有していたことがないものをいう。1 April 2021: a defined term was replaced, and lost its ceiling
This is the substantial one. Until 31 March 2021 the Act used the term ichiji kyoju hisozokunin (一時居住被相続人), a temporary-resident decedent, and defined it as a deceased person who held a Table 1 status, had a jusho in Japan, and whose jusho periods over the previous fifteen years totalled ten years or less. From 1 April 2021 that term was removed from the Act and 外国人被相続人 was put in its place:
二 外国人被相続人 相続開始の時において、在留資格を有し、かつ、この法律の施行地に住所を有していた当該相続に係る被相続人をいう。The ten-year ceiling is gone. The new definition asks two questions and stops: did the deceased hold a Table 1 status, and did they have a jusho in Japan. A person who had lived in Japan on a work visa for twenty-five years satisfies it just as squarely as one who arrived last year. Under the old wording that person was not a temporary-resident decedent, so the carve-outs in Article 1-3(1) did not open, and their heirs abroad were exposed to worldwide scope. Under the current wording the carve-outs do open.
How we checked this
e-Gov's v2 point-in-time API returns the text of a single article as it stood on a given date. We requested Article 1-3 at 31 March 2018, 1 April 2018, 31 March 2021, 1 April 2021 and 7 August 2026 and diffed paragraph 3. The term 一時居住被相続人 appears four times in the 31 March 2021 text and zero times in the 1 April 2021 text; 外国人被相続人 goes from zero to four on the same day. One caution on method: the point-in-time text merges every amendment in force on the date requested, so the date tells you what the law said, not reliably which act changed it. The revision list for this Act attributes amendments effective on those two dates to Act No. 7 of 2018 and Act No. 11 of 2021.
Japanese property is taxed no matter who inherits it
Everything above is about the reach beyond Japan. For readers of this site there is a much shorter answer to the narrower question, and it does not depend on visas, nationality or residence at all.
第十条 次の各号に掲げる財産の所在については、当該各号に規定する場所による。一 動産若しくは不動産又は不動産の上に存する権利については、その動産又は不動産の所在。…Land and buildings are situated where they are. That places a house in Nagano inside the enforcement area of the Act, which brings it within Article 2(2) even for someone in the residual categories. An heir who has never set foot in Japan, holds no status of residence and has no jusho here is still taxed on the Japanese property — and only on that.
Article 10 goes on to locate the other common asset types, and the answers are not always the intuitive ones: a bank deposit is at the branch that took it, an insurance payout at the insurer's head office, shares at the issuing company's head office, and a loan receivable at the debtor's address. Article 10(3) sweeps up anything not listed to the deceased's own jusho.
The deduction, the rate table, and a worked example
Japan does not tax each heir on what they actually receive and then stop. It computes a total for the estate using a fiction — the statutory shares, applied whether or not anybody takes them — and then splits that total. Article 15 gives the deduction and Article 16 gives the method and the rates.
The basic deduction, isan ni kakaru kiso kojo gaku (遺産に係る基礎控除額), is ¥30,000,000 plus ¥6,000,000 for each statutory heir. Two counting rules in Article 15(2) matter and are easy to miss: an heir who has renounced the inheritance is still counted as though they had not, and adopted children are capped — one may be counted where the deceased had natural children, two where they had none.
| Each statutory share, up to | Rate |
|---|---|
| ¥10,000,000 | 10% |
| ¥30,000,000 | 15% |
| ¥50,000,000 | 20% |
| ¥100,000,000 | 30% |
| ¥200,000,000 | 40% |
| ¥300,000,000 | 45% |
| ¥600,000,000 | 50% |
| above ¥600,000,000 | 55% |
A worked example
Take a taxable estate of ¥80,000,000 and three statutory heirs — a spouse and two children. These are numbers we picked to show the mechanism; they are not anybody's figures.
- Basic deduction: ¥30,000,000 + (¥6,000,000 × 3) = ¥48,000,000
- Taxable balance: ¥80,000,000 − ¥48,000,000 = ¥32,000,000
- Split by statutory share (Civil Code Art.900(i)): spouse one half = ¥16,000,000; each child one quarter = ¥8,000,000
- Tax on the spouse's notional slice: ¥10,000,000 at 10% = ¥1,000,000, plus ¥6,000,000 at 15% = ¥900,000 → ¥1,900,000
- Tax on each child's notional slice: ¥8,000,000 at 10% = ¥800,000
- Total for the estate: ¥1,900,000 + ¥800,000 + ¥800,000 = ¥3,500,000
That total is then divided among the heirs in proportion to what each actually receives, and only then do the personal reliefs apply. The largest is the spouse's, in Article 19-2: a spouse pays nothing on the greater of their statutory share and ¥160,000,000. In the example above, a spouse taking half the estate would have their portion of the ¥3,500,000 extinguished entirely.
Two conditions on the spouse's relief
Article 19-2(3) makes it available only where it is claimed in the return with the prescribed schedule attached — it is not applied automatically. And Article 19-2(2) excludes property that is still undivided at the filing deadline from the calculation, which means a family that has not agreed how to split the estate within ten months can lose the benefit of it in the meantime. The same paragraph allows it back if the division happens within three years of the deadline.
Two reliefs that are switched off differently
Two of the personal reliefs are withheld from people in the residual categories. What is easy to miss is that they are withheld from different lists, and they differ by a single item.
| Relief | Amount | Excluded categories |
|---|---|---|
| Minor's deduction 未成年者控除 (Art.19-3) | ¥100,000 for each year until age 18 | Art.1-3(1) (iii) and (iv) |
| Disability deduction 障害者控除 (Art.19-4) | ¥100,000 for each year until age 85, or ¥200,000 for a person with a severe disability | Art.1-3(1) (ii), (iii) and (iv) |
Article 19-3 opens by excluding those who fall under items (iii) or (iv). Article 19-4 opens by excluding those who fall under items (ii) to (iv). Item (ii) is the worldwide-scope category for a person with no jusho in Japan.
So a person living abroad in category (ii) — taxed on the whole of what they receive, wherever it is — can claim the minor's deduction and cannot claim the disability deduction. The same person, same facts, two neighbouring articles, opposite answers. Both reliefs also require the recipient to be a statutory heir under the Civil Code, and both spill over to a supporting relative where the amount exceeds the tax.
The 330 m² relief: one test looks abroad, one does not
The single largest reduction available on a family home is Article 69-4 of the Special Taxation Measures Act, the shokibo takuchi to no tokurei (小規模宅地等の特例). For land the deceased lived on, it brings only 20% of the value into the taxable base — an 80% reduction — for up to 330 m². For land that was rented out it brings in 50%, for up to 200 m².
Read the article on its own and it looks open to everybody. We searched the whole of Article 69-4 for 国籍 (nationality), 居住者 and 非居住者 (resident and non-resident), 外国 (foreign) and 制限納税義務者 (limited taxpayer). None of them appears; the subject of paragraph 1 is 個人, an individual. A spouse qualifies with no further test at all, and a relative who lived in the same house and stays there qualifies.
Then there is the route for a relative who did not live there — the one that matters to an heir who has built a life somewhere else. The Japanese press nicknames it ie naki ko (家なき子), the child with no house. And this is where reading only the Act will mislead you, because the Act hands the definition of who may use this route straight to the Ministry of Finance:
ロ 当該親族（当該被相続人の居住の用に供されていた宅地等を取得した者であつて財務省令で定めるものに限る。）が次に掲げる要件の全てを満たすこと…The Ministerial Rules take that up, and there the nationality test that is absent from the statute finally appears:
４ 法第六十九条の四第三項第二号ロに規定する財務省令で定める者は、相続税法（昭和二十五年法律第七十三号）第一条の三第一項第一号若しくは第二号の規定に該当する者又は同項第四号の規定に該当する者のうち日本国籍を有する者とする。Line that up against the four categories from the top of this page and the effect is stark. Categories (i) and (ii) — the worldwide-scope ones — may use the route whatever their nationality. Category (iv), the non-resident taxed only on Japanese property, may use it only if Japanese. Category (iii) is not listed and so cannot use it at all.
Who this shuts out
A non-Japanese heir living abroad, whose Japanese-resident parent held a Table 1 status of residence, is pushed into category (iv) by the very carve-out that limited their tax to Japanese assets. That is the good news. The bad news is in the same sentence: category (iv) reaches this relief only through the Japanese-nationality limb, so the 80% reduction on the family home is closed to them — while a Japanese national in otherwise identical circumstances keeps it. The gate is in a ministerial rule, not in the Act, which is a reasonable explanation for why it is easy to miss.
For anyone who does clear that gate, the route then has two negative conditions — and they are drafted differently from each other:
（１）相続開始前三年以内に相続税法の施行地内にある当該親族、当該親族の配偶者、当該親族の三親等内の親族又は当該親族と特別の関係がある法人として政令で定める法人が所有する家屋（相続開始の直前において当該被相続人の居住の用に供されていた家屋を除く。）に居住したことがないこと。（２）当該被相続人の相続開始時に当該親族が居住している家屋を相続開始前のいずれの時においても所有していたことがないこと。…Condition (1) — have you lived in the last three years in a house owned by you or your close family? — is expressly limited to houses located within the enforcement area of the Inheritance Tax Act, which is to say, in Japan. A flat in Sydney owned by the heir's brother is not within it.
Condition (2) — have you ever owned the house you are living in when the death occurs? — carries no geographic wording at all. A house anywhere counts.
Why the asymmetry is the whole point
An heir living overseas in rented accommodation meets condition (1) easily, because the relief's three-year look-back does not reach outside Japan. The same heir living overseas in a home they own fails condition (2), because that condition does reach outside Japan. Two people who have cleared the nationality gate above, with identical family circumstances in the same foreign city, land on opposite sides of an 80% reduction depending on whether they rent or own where they live. Whether either describes a given reader is a question about their own facts and their own paperwork, and it is one for a zeirishi (税理士) (licensed tax accountant).
Two procedural conditions apply to the relief no matter who claims it. Paragraph 7 makes it available only where it is claimed in the return with the prescribed schedule attached. Paragraph 4 disapplies it to land that is still undivided at the filing deadline, with the same three-year cure as the spouse's relief. Both of these punish an estate that has not been agreed in time, which brings us to the deadline.
Ten months — unless leaving Japan makes it shorter
Article 27(1) sets the deadline at ten months. The clock starts on the day after the day the person came to know that the inheritance had commenced — not the date of death, though for close family those will often be the same day.
The same sentence carries a bracket in the middle of it, and the bracket can move the deadline forward by months:
…その相続の開始があつたことを知つた日の翌日から十月以内（その者が国税通則法第百十七条第二項（納税管理人）の規定による納税管理人の届出をしないで当該期間内にこの法律の施行地に住所及び居所を有しないこととなるときは、当該住所及び居所を有しないこととなる日まで）に…申告書を…提出しなければならない。If a person is going to stop having both a jusho and a kyosho (居所) (a place of residence, a weaker connection than jusho) in Japan during that ten-month window, and they leave without having filed the notification appointing a nozei kanrinin (納税管理人) (tax agent), the deadline is not ten months. It is the day they go.
This is aimed squarely at a situation that is ordinary for this site's readers: a person inherits something in Japan, and then their posting ends, or they decide to go home, four months later. Article 117(1) of the Act on General Rules for National Taxes requires the appointment in those circumstances in mandatory terms, and Article 117(2) requires it to be notified to the tax office for the place of payment. The tax agent does not have to be a professional — the statute asks for a person with a jusho or kyosho in Japan who is conveniently placed to handle the matter.
Three years and two years: separate duties, separate clocks
Inheriting Japanese property creates a registration duty that has nothing to do with the tax return, runs on a different clock, and applies even where no tax at all is payable. Since April 2024 it has been compulsory.
第七十六条の二 所有権の登記名義人について相続の開始があったときは、当該相続により所有権を取得した者は、自己のために相続の開始があったことを知り、かつ、当該所有権を取得したことを知った日から三年以内に、所有権の移転の登記を申請しなければならない。遺贈（相続人に対する遺贈に限る。）により所有権を取得した者も、同様とする。The trigger is not the date of death. It is the day the person knew both that the inheritance had commenced for them and that they had acquired the ownership — two pieces of knowledge, and the clock waits for the later one. For an heir abroad who learns of a distant relative's estate long afterwards, that distinction is the difference between being in breach and not.
The second sentence of the same paragraph extends the duty beyond inheritance in the strict sense: a person who takes ownership by izo (遺贈) — a bequest under a will — is subject to it too — but only where the bequest is to an heir. That limit cuts both ways. Being left the property by will rather than taking it on intestacy does not take an heir outside the duty; equally, a legatee who is not an heir — a friend, a neighbour, a charity — is not caught by Article 76-2(1) at all, and so is not exposed to the fine in Article 164(1) under this provision.
Missing it without justifiable grounds carries a karyo (過料) — a non-penal administrative fine, not a criminal penalty — of up to ¥100,000 under Article 164(1).
It reaches backwards, and that is the part people miss
The duty does not apply only to deaths on or after 1 April 2024. Article 5(6) of the supplementary provisions of the amending act applies Article 76-2 to inheritances that had already commenced before the commencement date, and does it by rewriting the trigger:
６ 第二号新不動産登記法第七十六条の二の規定は、第二号施行日前に所有権の登記名義人について相続の開始があった場合についても、適用する。この場合において、…「知った日」とあるのは「知った日又は第二号施行日のいずれか遅い日」と、同条第二項中「分割の日」とあるのは「分割の日又は第二号施行日のいずれか遅い日」とする。The clock starts on the later of the day you knew and the commencement date. For a property inherited in, say, 2009 and never transferred — a very common situation, and one of the reasons the duty was introduced — the three years run from 1 April 2024, which puts the deadline at 31 March 2027. A family that has been leaving a grandparent's house in the register for a decade is inside this rule, not outside it.
Paragraph 7 of the same supplementary article does the same job for the name-and-address duty below, so a change of address that happened years ago is measured from its commencement date rather than from the change.
The escape valve, and what it does not do
Article 76-3 lets an heir who cannot yet register notify the registrar that the inheritance has commenced and that they are an heir. Paragraph 2 treats that notification as performance of the duty. It is a great deal simpler than a full transfer, which generally needs every heir to agree.
But it is a note against the register, not a registration of ownership: paragraph 3 has the registrar record the fact by annotation. And paragraph 4 restarts a three-year clock from the day the estate is actually divided. It buys time; it does not end the obligation, and it does not put anyone in a position to sell.
A second duty started on 1 April 2026
Article 76-5 now requires a registered owner to register a change of their own name or address within two years of the change, with a fine of up to ¥50,000 under Article 164(2). We checked its commencement by asking e-Gov for the article on three dates: on 31 March 2026 there was no such article, and on 1 and 2 April 2026 there was.
For an owner who lives abroad this is the duty most likely to be breached without anyone noticing, because moving house in another country does not feel like a Japanese registration event. It is a different deadline from the three-year inheritance duty and from the ten-month tax return, and none of the three waits for the others. Because of the retroactivity in paragraph 7 above, an address change that predates 1 April 2026 is measured from that date, which puts the deadline at 31 March 2028.
An owner abroad has to name someone in Japan
One further requirement applies to exactly this readership, and it is a registered particular rather than a deadline:
二 所有権の登記名義人が国内に住所を有しないときは、その国内における連絡先となる者の氏名又は名称及び住所その他の国内における連絡先に関する事項として法務省令で定めるものWhere the registered owner has no address in Japan, a domestic contact is part of what the ownership registration records. This is a separate thing from the tax agent in the section above — that one is appointed for the tax office under the national tax rules; this one is recorded in the property register. A household that inherits a Japanese house and then lives abroad can need both, for different authorities, at different times.
If you are working out what the property itself is worth for any of this, note that inheritance tax does not use the figure that our guide to property tax is built on. Article 22 of the Inheritance Tax Act says only 時価, market value at the time of acquisition; in practice land is valued from the National Tax Agency's published 路線価 map and multiplier tables, which are a different annual publication from the municipal assessed value used for the annual property tax.
Who inherits is not decided by the law that taxes it
These are two separate questions and it is worth keeping them apart, because the answers can come from different countries.
Which country's law decides who inherits and in what proportions is a question of private international law. Japan answers it in one line:
（相続）第三十六条 相続は、被相続人の本国法による。Succession is governed by the national law of the deceased — not by where the property is, and not by where anyone lives. Article 41 then adds renvoi: where a party's national law is to apply and that country's law would point back to Japanese law, Japanese law applies. Article 36 is not in the list of exceptions to Article 41.
This matters because a good many legal systems apply the law of the place where immovable property is located to immovable property. If the deceased's national law does that, it points back at Japan for the Japanese house, and Article 41 sends the question home to Japanese law. Whether that happens in any particular case is a question about a specific foreign legal system, and that is work for a bengoshi (弁護士) (attorney). We are not going to characterise any country's law here.
What we can say is that the tax question does not follow the succession question. Japanese inheritance tax is charged under the Inheritance Tax Act on the categories in Article 1-3 regardless of which country's law governed the succession itself. An estate can be distributed under foreign law and taxed under Japanese law at the same time.
For orientation, Japan's own statutory shares are in Civil Code Article 900: the spouse always inherits, and takes one half against children, two thirds against the deceased's parents and grandparents, and three quarters against siblings. Children share equally. The one proviso in Article 900 cuts a share in half, and on the current text it does that for a sibling who shares only one parent with the deceased. It says nothing about whether a child was born inside or outside a marriage.
What to ask, and what we cannot tell you
We are a metalwork company that publishes what it has checked. We are not tax accountants, judicial scriveners or attorneys, we cannot work out anybody's position, and nothing here is a substitute for someone who can. What this page is good for is walking into that conversation knowing which questions decide the outcome.
- Which of the four categories in Article 1-3(1) applies to each person receiving? Ask it about each heir separately. Two siblings can land in different categories.
- Which appended table was the deceased's status of residence in, and did they have a jusho in Japan at death? This is what opens or closes the carve-outs for everybody else.
- Is anyone receiving likely to stop having a jusho and a kyosho in Japan within ten months? If so, ask about the tax agent notification before making travel plans, not after.
- Does the family home route under Article 69-4(3)(ii)(b) turn on whether an heir rents or owns abroad? Condition (2) has no geographic limit; condition (1) does.
- When did each heir come to know both facts in Article 76-2(1)? The registration clock starts there, and it is not the date of death.
- Whose national law governs the succession, and does it send the question back to Japan? Ask this before signing any division of the estate.
What we did not confirm
We did not establish what an heir living abroad uses in place of a Japanese seal certificate when signing a division of the estate. We looked for a legal basis for a substitute and did not find one, so we are not setting out a procedure. We did not examine the estate tax treaty between Japan and the United States beyond confirming that implementing legislation for it exists, and we have not checked whether Japan has such a treaty with any other country. Gift tax has its own parallel set of definitions in Articles 1-4 and 2-2, and is now covered in a separate guide — including the fact that Article 1-4 borrows its definition of a status of residence from Article 1-3(3)(i) rather than stating one. On special permanent residents, we have read the 1991 act far enough to establish that the status of residence ceases to have effect; we have not traced how the tax authorities treat that position in practice.
Selling the property afterwards is a separate tax with its own rules, and Article 35(3) of the Special Taxation Measures Act carries a ¥30,000,000 deduction written specifically for a dwelling that came from an estate — time-limited, capped by sale price, and reduced where three or more heirs took it. Our guide to capital gains tax on a sale sets out that provision and the ordinary one alongside it.
A related page on this site covers the mortgage tax deduction, which turns on a similar question of who a statute is addressed to — and reaches the opposite answer, because Article 41 of the Special Taxation Measures Act says 個人 and stops there.
The tax and the registration run on separate clocks. Article 76-2 of the Real Property Registration Act requires an heir who acquires ownership to apply to register the transfer within three years, and Article 164(1) of that Act sets a non-criminal fine of up to ¥100,000 for failing to do so without justification. Our guide to the property register itself sets out that duty, the lighter statement under Article 76-3 that stops the clock, and a certificate created by Article 119-2 that lists the properties a deceased person was registered as owning.
Sources
Every figure and rule above was read in the Japanese original on 7 August 2026, using e-Gov's point-in-time service with that date. Where we relied on comparing two dates, the dates are stated. Links go to the law as a whole; the articles cited are listed with each entry.
Art.1-3(1) sets out the four categories of taxpayer in its items (i) to (iv), and Art.1-3(3) defines the three terms they turn on. Item (i) covers a person who had a 住所 in Japan when the property was acquired, split between (a) an individual who is not a 一時居住者 and (b) one who is, the latter carved out where the deceased was an 外国人被相続人 or a 非居住被相続人. Item (ii) covers a person with no 住所 in Japan, split between (a) Japanese nationals — (1) those who had a 住所 in Japan at some point in the ten years before death and (2) those who did not — and (b) non-nationals, with (2) and (b) carved out on the same condition. Items (iii) and (iv) are the residual categories for those who take Japan-situs property and fall outside (i) and (ii). Art.1-3(3)(i) defines 一時居住者 as a person who at the time of death holds a status of residence listed in the upper column of Appended Table 1 of the Immigration Act and whose periods of 住所 in Japan total ten years or less within the fifteen years before the death. Art.1-3(3)(ii) defines 外国人被相続人; Art.1-3(3)(iii) defines 非居住被相続人. Art.2 attaches worldwide scope to items (i) and (ii) and Japan-situs-only scope to items (iii) and (iv). Art.10(1)(i) locates immovable property, and rights over it, at the place where it is. Art.15 is the basic deduction of ¥30,000,000 plus ¥6,000,000 per statutory heir, with the counting rules for adopted children in para.2 and for renunciation in the same paragraph. Art.16 is the rate table and the statutory-share method. Art.19-2 is the spouse's relief — the greater of the spouse's statutory share and ¥160,000,000, with para.2 excluding property still undivided at the filing deadline (subject to a three-year cure) and para.3 making it conditional on the return and the prescribed schedule. Art.19-3 is the minor's deduction and excludes items (iii) and (iv); Art.19-4 is the disability deduction and excludes items (ii) to (iv). Art.20-2 is the foreign tax credit for tax charged on property outside Japan, capped by proportion. Art.22 sets value at 時価 at the time of acquisition. Art.27(1) sets the filing deadline at ten months from the day after the day on which the person came to know of the commencement of inheritance, and shortens it to the day the person ceases to have both a 住所 and a 居所 in Japan where they leave within that period without filing a tax agent notification. We read the text as in force on 7 August 2026.
We took Art.1-3 at 31 March 2018, 1 April 2018, 31 March 2021, 1 April 2021 and 7 August 2026 and compared the definitions paragraph. On 1 April 2018 the definition of 非居住被相続人 lost its fifteen-year, ten-year limb. On 1 April 2021 the defined term 一時居住被相続人 was removed and 外国人被相続人 put in its place, and the new definition carries no limit at all on how long the deceased had lived in Japan. The revision list attributes amendments taking effect on those dates to Act No. 7 of 2018 and Act No. 11 of 2021 respectively; note that e-Gov's point-in-time text merges every amendment in force on the date asked for, so a date can carry more than one amending act.
Appended Table 1 lists statuses defined by the activity permitted in Japan — among them 外交, 公用, 教授, 芸術, 宗教, 報道, 高度専門職, 経営・管理, 技術・人文知識・国際業務, 留学 and 家族滞在. Appended Table 2 lists four statuses defined by personal status rather than activity: 永住者, 日本人の配偶者等, 永住者の配偶者等 and 定住者. The Inheritance Tax Act's definition of 一時居住者 points only at the upper column of Appended Table 1. Art.61-2-2(1), in defining 在留資格未取得外国人, lists 特別永住者 alongside — and separately from — those holding a status in the upper column of either table. That drafting is consistent with special permanent residence being something other than a Table 1 or Table 2 status, but the provision sits in the refugee chapter and is not addressed to the question; we read it as support for the reading, not as a ruling on it.
The act governing special permanent residents. There are three routes in, and none of them involves a status in Appended Table 1 of the Immigration Act. Art.3 covers those who qualified when the act commenced in 1991, defining them by residence or permission under earlier post-war legislation — item (i)(a) is a person residing by operation of Art.2(6) of the 1952 Act No. 126, and item (i)(b) a person holding permanent residence permission under the former Japan–ROK special act — or by a status in the upper column of Table 2 of the Immigration Act as it then stood, namely 永住者 in item (i)(c) and 平和条約関連国籍離脱者の子 in item (ii). Art.4 covers a descendant who comes to be in Japan without going through the landing procedure in Chapter III of the Immigration Act, typically by birth, and so without acquiring a status of residence. Art.5 covers a person holding a Table 2 status other than permanent residence, and Art.5(2) provides that on permission the determination of the status of residence and the period of stay ceases to have effect. We read the definitions; we did not find a ruling applying them to this status.
The small-scale land relief. Para.1 reduces the value brought into the taxable base to 20% for 特定事業用宅地等, 特定居住用宅地等 and 特定同族会社事業用宅地等, and to 50% for 貸付事業用宅地等; para.2 sets the area caps at 400 m², 330 m² and 200 m² with a formula for combining them. Para.3(ii) defines 特定居住用宅地等: the spouse qualifies without further conditions, and otherwise a relative must satisfy (a), (b) or (c). Limb (b)(1) requires that the relative has not lived, in the three years before the death, in a house located within the enforcement area of the Inheritance Tax Act owned by themselves, their spouse, a relative within the third degree, or a company connected with them; limb (b)(2) requires that they have never at any time owned the house they are living in when the death occurs, and carries no such geographic wording. Para.4 disapplies the relief to land still undivided at the filing deadline, with a three-year cure. Para.7 makes it conditional on claiming it in the return with the prescribed schedule attached. The article itself contains no reference to nationality, to residence status, or to the categories of taxpayer in Art.1-3 — we searched the text for 国籍, 居住者, 非居住者, 外国 and 制限納税義務者 and found none. The opening words of para.3(ii)(b) nevertheless restrict that limb to a relative 財務省令で定めるもの, and the restriction is in the Ministerial Rules, not here.
The provision that supplies the missing gate: the persons prescribed by Ministry of Finance Order for the purposes of Art.69-4(3)(ii)(b) are those falling under Art.1-3(1)(i) or (ii) of the Inheritance Tax Act, or those falling under Art.1-3(1)(iv) who hold Japanese nationality. Art.1-3(1)(iii) is not listed. Read together with the four categories, this closes the house-less-relative route to a non-Japanese heir who is a limited taxpayer.
Carried on e-Gov as the supplementary provisions attached to the Real Property Registration Act, under the amending law number 令和三年四月二八日法律第二四号. Supplementary Art.5(6) applies Art.76-2 to inheritances that commenced before its commencement date and substitutes, for the day of knowledge, the later of that day and the commencement date — and the later of the day of division and the commencement date in para.2. Supplementary Art.5(7) does the same for Art.76-5, substituting the later of the day of the change and its own commencement date. The registration duty took effect on 1 April 2024 and the name-and-address duty on 1 April 2026.
Art.76-2(1) requires a person who acquires ownership by inheritance to apply to register the transfer within three years of the day on which they came to know both that the inheritance had commenced for them and that they had acquired the ownership. Its second sentence extends the same duty to a person who takes ownership by 遺贈 (bequest), but expressly only where the bequest is to an heir — 遺贈（相続人に対する遺贈に限る。）— so a legatee who is not an heir falls outside Art.76-2(1), and outside the fine in Art.164(1) so far as that provision is concerned. Para.2 gives a further three years from a later division of the estate. Art.76-3 allows an heir instead to notify the registrar that the inheritance has commenced and that they are an heir, which para.2 treats as performance of the duty, and para.4 then requires registration within three years of any later division. Art.76-5 requires an owner of record to register a change of name or address within two years of the change. Art.73-2(1)(ii) makes a domestic contact — the name and address of a person in Japan — a registered particular of the ownership registration where the registered owner has no address in Japan. Art.164(1) provides a non-penal fine (過料) of up to ¥100,000 for failing without justifiable grounds to make the applications required by Art.76-2(1) and (2) and Art.76-3(4); Art.164(2) provides up to ¥50,000 for Art.76-5. We queried Art.76-5 at 31 March 2026, when e-Gov returned no such article, and at 1 and 2 April 2026, when it did.
Art.36: 相続は、被相続人の本国法による — succession is governed by the national law of the deceased. Art.37 applies the testator's national law to the making and effect of a will. Art.41 is renvoi: where the national law of a party is to apply and that country's law points back to Japanese law, Japanese law applies. The exceptions listed in Art.41 are Arts.25, 26(1), 27 and 32; Art.36 is not among them.
Art.890 makes the spouse always an heir. Art.887 gives the children priority, with representation by grandchildren. Art.889 puts direct ascendants next and siblings after them, and only where there is no heir under Art.887. Art.900 sets the statutory shares: one half each where children and a spouse inherit; two thirds to the spouse against one third to ascendants; three quarters to the spouse against one quarter to siblings; and equal shares among several children, ascendants or siblings, with a half share for a half-blood sibling. The proviso reducing a child's share applies to half-blood siblings, not to children born outside marriage.
Art.117(1) requires a taxpayer who has, or comes to have, no 住所 and no 居所 in Japan to appoint a 納税管理人 to handle filings and other tax matters, chosen from persons with a 住所 or 居所 in Japan who are conveniently placed to do so; para.2 requires the appointment to be notified to the district director for the place of tax payment.
The published 路線価 and multiplier tables used to value land for inheritance tax. These are the National Tax Agency's own annual publication and sit under the property valuation circular rather than in the statute; Art.22 of the Act itself says only 時価.