Bonus Tax in Japan: How Much You Take Home (2026)

Last updated: 6 October 2026 · figures for the 2026 tax year (令和8年分)

Four things come out of a Japanese bonus (賞与) — health insurance, the employees’ pension, employment insurance and income tax — and one thing does not: resident tax (住民税). A ¥500,000 bonus paid to somebody in Tokyo on a ¥400,000 monthly salary leaves ¥391,710 in hand. Every case in the tables below keeps between 78.3% and 81.8% of the gross, and what decides which end you are at is not the size of the bonus. It is what you were paid the month before.

What these figures assume

Change any of these and the numbers move. They all came out of the calculator on this site.

• An employee of one Japanese company, insured through 協会けんぽ rather than a company health society, with the 扶養控除等申告書 filed — so column kou (甲欄) of the withholding tables.
• Single, no dependents, under 40, so no long-term care insurance yet. Working in Tokyo, in an ordinary business.
• One bonus in the month, with an ordinary salary paid the month before it, and the bonus no more than ten times that salary after insurance. Both conditions matter; the closing note says what happens when they fail.

The four things that come out

Health insurance and the pension are charged on the 標準賞与額: the bonus with anything under ¥1,000 dropped. Health insurance takes 10.08% of it in Tokyo for 2026 — 9.85% for the prefecture plus the 0.23% child-care support levy — and the pension takes 18.3%. Your employer pays half of each, and the table shows your half. Employment insurance is 0.5%, charged on the bonus itself rather than on the rounded figure. None of this goes through a grade: a salary is insured on the 標準報酬月額 it falls into, a bonus on its own amount, which is why these three lines are exact percentages.

Income tax is the line that moves. It is neither a band of your annual income nor the monthly withholding table: the National Tax Agency’s 賞与に対する源泉徴収税額の算出率の表 gives a single rate from two things — what you were paid the previous month, after social insurance, and how many dependents you have — and that rate is applied to the whole bonus once its own insurance has come off. On a ¥300,000 salary the previous month leaves ¥255,930 after insurance, which falls in the band running from ¥94,000 to ¥260,000 and carries 4.084%. On ¥400,000 it leaves ¥339,821, two bands higher at 8.168%. The same bonus, twice the tax.

Tokyo, under 40, no dependents, an ordinary business. The two salaries are ¥83,891 apart once insurance has come off, and that gap spans the whole of the 6.126% band and the bottom of the next one.

Why a bonus looks taxed harder than a salary

Insurance is not the reason. ¥73,450 of that ¥500,000 bonus is social insurance, 14.7% of it, against ¥60,179 out of a ¥400,000 salary, or 15.0% — near enough the same share. The whole of the difference is income tax, and it is a large one: the monthly table takes ¥10,750 out of the salary, 2.7% of it, while the bonus table takes ¥34,840, 7.0%.

What separates them is what each table is built to do. Social insurance comes off the payment before either one is opened, so that is not it. The difference is the allowances. Every row of the monthly table hands you a twelfth of the year’s — the employment income deduction (給与所得控除) and the basic exemption (基礎控除) — because it is meant to be read twelve times, so what it charges is close to the average rate on a year of that salary. The bonus table gives the bonus no allowance of its own at all: it picks one rate from the size of your monthly pay, on the reasoning that a bonus sits on top of a year’s salary whose allowances are already accounted for, and applies it to the whole of the bonus. The 2.1% reconstruction surcharge (復興特別所得税) is inside those rates, which is why they read 4.084% rather than 4%, and 8.168% rather than 8%.

The bands are wide and their edges are hard: a colleague whose previous month landed ¥1 above ¥260,000 pays 6.126% where you pay 4.084%, on an identical bonus. Neither figure is anybody’s final tax, though — both tables are estimates, and December settles them.

What December does about it

Twelve months of ¥400,000 plus two bonuses of ¥500,000 is a gross year of ¥5,800,000. The withholding over that year adds up to ¥198,680 while the income tax the year actually owes is ¥134,200, so the 年末調整 (year-end adjustment) on the December payslip hands ¥64,480 back. The bonuses account for ¥18,980 of that: the same salary with no bonus at all still over-withholds, by ¥45,500.

Two warnings on that number. It is not always a refund: at ¥300,000 a month with two bonuses of ¥1,500,000 the same calculation ends with ¥8,940 to pay in December. And somebody has to do the adjustment — if you change jobs during the year, your new employer normally does it for both once you hand over the 源泉徴収票 from the old one, and if there is no new employer you square the year up with a final tax return (確定申告) of your own, usually to claim money back. The same applies if your salary from the company passes ¥20,000,000, which is above what 年末調整 covers. The refund above is also on the large side: every year on this site is computed with the 2026 rules, and the 2026 monthly table was printed before that year’s higher deductions were legislated. The direction is the reliable part.

Resident tax is not taken from a bonus, but it does not forget

Resident tax (住民税) is charged on the previous calendar year’s income and collected from the June after it, in twelve instalments out of your monthly pay (地方税法 第321条の5). A bonus month gets the same instalment as any other: in the settled year above, June carries ¥25,200 of resident tax and July ¥24,300 — the difference is rounding, not the bonus — and the ¥500,000 paid that June adds nothing to either.

What the bonus does is raise next year’s bill. The ¥1,000,000 of bonus in that year lifts the resident tax on it to ¥292,500, against ¥227,100 for the same salary without it: ¥65,400 more, arriving the following June, by which time it is easy not to connect the two. If you have just arrived it has not started at all yet — why your first payslips in Japan have no resident tax explains when it does.

Questions people ask

Why is the tax rate on my bonus different from the one on my monthly salary?

Because they come from two different tables, and the bonus one is read with last month’s salary rather than with the bonus. The rate is chosen by your previous month’s pay after social insurance and by your number of dependents, then applied to what is left of the bonus once its own social insurance has come off — so two people receiving the same bonus, one paid ¥300,000 a month and one ¥400,000, are charged 4.084% and 8.168% of that. Neither rate is the tax you finally pay: it is withholding, and the December 年末調整 recalculates the year as a whole.

Is resident tax deducted from a bonus?

No. Resident tax is a fixed bill for the year, split into twelve monthly instalments from June, and a bonus month carries the same instalment as any other month. The bonus does count towards the income the next year’s bill is calculated on, so it reaches you a year later: ¥1,000,000 of bonus added ¥65,400 in the example above.

Is there a cap on the social insurance taken from a large bonus?

Yes, two of them. The pension is charged on at most ¥1,500,000 of bonus in a month, and health insurance on at most ¥5,730,000 of bonus over a fiscal year running April to March. So a ¥2,000,000 bonus pays ¥137,250 of pension rather than the ¥183,000 that 18.3% halved would otherwise come to, and after a ¥400,000 month it keeps 80.4% — a larger share than the ¥500,000 bonus in the table, purely because of that cap. Employment insurance and income tax have no cap of that kind: both are charged on the whole bonus, however large it is. A package of ¥5,000,000 a year, split the usual way into twelve months and two bonuses, is worked through line by line in what a ¥5,000,000 salary takes home.

This is a general explanation and an estimate, not advice about your situation. Company health societies (健康保険組合) set their own rates; a bonus paid in a month with no ordinary salary behind it — or one more than ten times that salary after insurance — is taxed through the monthly table instead (所得税法 第186条第2項); and a payment made four or more times a year is not a bonus for insurance purposes but ordinary remuneration, which moves your monthly grade instead. A 税理士 (licensed tax accountant) is the person to ask about any of it.

Sources

• National Tax Agency — No.2523 賞与に対する源泉徴収 (the rate comes from the previous month’s pay after social insurance and the number of dependents) and the 令和8年分 賞与に対する源泉徴収税額の算出率の表 — with no dependents, 4.084% from ¥94,000 to ¥260,000, 6.126% to ¥309,000 and 8.168% to ¥342,000 of previous-month pay after insurance
• Japan Pension Service — 賞与にかかる保険料 (標準賞与額 drops anything under ¥1,000; the cap is ¥1,500,000 a month for the pension, ¥5,730,000 a fiscal year for health insurance) and 令和8年度 厚生年金保険料額表 (18.3%)
• Japan Health Insurance Association — 令和8年度の都道府県単位保険料率 (Tokyo 9.85%, before the 0.23% child-care support levy)
• Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare — 令和8年度 雇用保険料率 (0.5% for an employee in an ordinary business)
• Income Tax Act (所得税法) 第186条第2項 on a bonus with no ordinary salary behind it, and 第190条 on the ¥20,000,000 limit for 年末調整
• Local Tax Act (地方税法) 第321条の5 on collection of resident tax in twelve instalments from June

Run it on your own bonus