Calculator
Japan gift tax calculator, built from the bands the statute actually sets
Japan's gift tax is charged on the person who receives, and it is charged on a calendar year rather than on a single gift. This adds the statutory bands one at a time, as Art.21-7 and Art.70-2-5(1) describe them, and applies the two statutory roundings. It also handles the case the reprinted rate tables cannot: a year in which you received from a parent and from someone else.
Rates checked against primary sources on 11 August 2026.
One recipient, one calendar year
Enter what one person received by gift during a single calendar year. The annual deduction of ¥1,100,000 belongs to the person receiving, once per year — not once per person giving — so add everything together. Nothing you type leaves your browser.
Parents, grandparents, great-grandparents — a chokkei sonzoku (直系尊属). Only put figures here if you were 18 or older on 1 January of that year. Parents-in-law, aunts and uncles do not belong here.
A spouse, a sibling, a parent-in-law, a friend, or a lineal ascendant while you were under 18 on 1 January of that year.
Gift tax on the figures entered, annual system
¥485,000
- Received in the year
- ¥5,000,000
- Less the annual deduction (Art.70-2-4)
- −¥1,100,000
- Taxable base, rounded down to ¥1,000 (Art.118(1))
- ¥3,900,000
The bands that were summed
Special table — Special Taxation Measures Act Art.70-2-5(1). The statute adds the bands one by one; the reprinted “multiply then subtract” table is a shortcut to the same figure.
- ¥2,000,000 at 10%¥200,000
- ¥1,900,000 at 15%¥285,000
What this calculation leaves out — and when it will be far too high
This applies the annual system and nothing else. It does not apply the ¥20,000,000 spouse deduction (Art.21-6), the exemption for money from a lineal ascendant used to buy a home (Art.70-2), or the settlement-at-inheritance system (Art.21-9 onwards). If any of those fit, the real figure can be very much lower than the one above — a qualifying gift between spouses of ¥20,000,000 shows here as a large tax and may in fact carry none.
It also does not apply the add-back of earlier gifts on a later death (Art.19), which is a question about an inheritance rather than about this year, and it assumes everything entered is taxable. Money from a person who owes you a duty of support, given for ordinary living or school costs, is outside the tax base altogether under Art.21-3(1)(ii) and should not be entered here — though the tax authority's circular reads that exclusion as reaching what is provided as and when needed and applied directly to those costs, and as not reaching money that is saved or put towards buying a home.
Whether a gift qualifies for the special table, and whether the settlement system has been elected for a particular donor, are questions about your own circumstances. We do not decide them here and the figure above assumes your answers are the ones you typed.
Where each number comes from
- The annual deduction of ¥1,100,000
- Not where you would expect. Inheritance Tax Act Art.21-5 sets the annual deduction at ¥600,000. The figure that applies is an override in Special Taxation Measures Act Art.70-2-4(1), which for property acquired by gift on or after 1 January 2001 substitutes ¥1,100,000. Art.70-2-4(2) then deems the amount deducted to have been deducted under Art.21-5, so everything downstream still works. It is one deduction per recipient per year, because Art.21-5 attaches it to the taxable amount, which Art.21-2(1) builds from the total of everything that person received by gift in the year.
- The general table
- Inheritance Tax Act Art.21-7: 10% up to ¥2,000,000, then 15% to ¥3,000,000, 20% to ¥4,000,000, 30% to ¥6,000,000, 40% to ¥10,000,000, 45% to ¥15,000,000, 50% to ¥30,000,000 and 55% above that. The article directs that the base be divided into those bands and the results added, which is what this calculator shows.
- The special table
- Special Taxation Measures Act Art.70-2-5(1), for property acquired by gift from a lineal ascendant on or after 1 January 2015 by a person who was eighteen or older on 1 January of that year: 10% up to ¥2,000,000, then 15% to ¥4,000,000, 20% to ¥6,000,000, 30% to ¥10,000,000, 40% to ¥15,000,000, 45% to ¥30,000,000, 50% to ¥45,000,000 and 55% above that. Art.70-2-5(4) makes it conditional on claiming it in the return with the prescribed schedule attached — it is not applied for you.
- Both kinds in the same year
- Art.70-2-5(3). Where a person receives both kinds in one year, the tax is the sum of two figures: the whole base run through the special table multiplied by the share the lineal-ascendant gifts bear to the year's total, plus the whole base run through the general table multiplied by the share the rest bear. The deduction is not divided between them and the better table does not simply win.
- The two roundings
- Act on General Rules for National Taxes Art.118(1) rounds the taxable base — after the deductions the rate is applied to — down to a whole ¥1,000, and treats it as zero if the whole of it is under ¥1,000. Art.119(1) rounds the settled amount of tax down to a whole ¥100, and to zero if the whole of it is under ¥100. Because Art.119(1) speaks of the settled amount, the ¥100 rounding is applied once at the end rather than to each limb of a blended calculation.
What this deliberately does not do
It does not ask who you are, and it does not decide whether a particular gift qualifies for the special table, whether you are taxed on gifts from abroad, or whether any exemption fits. Those are questions about your circumstances rather than about arithmetic. The guide explains what each of them turns on and what to take to a qualified adviser.