Claiming Japan's Pension Lump-sum Withdrawal Payment: What to Do Before You Leave, the Deadlines, and Getting the 20.42% Withholding Back

If you are not a Japanese national and leave Japan after a short time in the public pension system, you can claim a lump-sum withdrawal payment (脱退一時金). The hard part is not the arithmetic but the order of the steps and the dates. A claim filed on the wrong day is not accepted, and leaving without a tax agent delays getting the withheld tax back. This guide lays the steps out in time order from the Japan Pension Service (JPS) and National Tax Agency (NTA) documents. For the amounts, use the pension refund calculator.

Who can claim

• You do not hold Japanese nationality.
• You have at least 6 months of National Pension contributions (months with unpaid contributions do not count) or at least 6 months of Employees' Pension coverage (including mutual-aid associations).
• You do not already meet the 10-year qualifying period for a Japanese old-age pension (counting exempt-from-qualifying periods), and you have never had the right to a disability pension or similar.
• You are no longer insured and do not have an address in Japan, and you claim within 2 years of the day you stopped having an address in Japan.

Before you claim: what you give up

Receiving a lump-sum withdrawal payment erases all of your Japanese pension coverage from before the claim. The payment is calculated on at most 60 months, but more than 60 months is lost: in JPS's own example, someone with 90 months of coverage is paid for 60 months and loses all 90. If totalizing your Japanese months with a partner country under a social security agreement would bring you to the 10-year qualifying period, you cannot claim at all. If you may return to Japan, or want to combine with a partner-country pension, ask a pension office before claiming.

If you expect repeated stays totalling more than 60 months, you may need to claim after each stay. JPS gives the example of someone who finishes a 3-year technical intern training and goes home, and later enters again on a Specified Skilled Worker (i) status.

The steps, in order

• Before you leave: appoint a tax agent and notify the tax office. A lump-sum payment from the Employees' Pension has 20.42% tax withheld when it is paid. To file for the refund and receive it, you must, before returning home, submit a “Notification of tax agent for income tax and consumption tax” (所得税・消費税の納税管理人の届出書) to the tax office that covers your last address or residence in Japan. Apart from having an address or residence in Japan, the tax agent has no special qualification. If you left without submitting it, send it together with your return.
• Before you leave: file your moving-out notice with the municipality. If you leave on a re-entry permit (including the deemed re-entry permit) without a moving-out notice, you stay insured in the National Pension until the permit expires, and you cannot claim.
• On or after your moving-out date: submit the claim to JPS. The condition is that you have no address in Japan on the day JPS accepts the claim. Even if you file from Japan before you leave, file on or after the planned moving-out date; by post, make sure it arrives on or after that date. The deadline is 2 years from the day you stopped having an address in Japan.
• Attachments. A copy of your passport (the pages showing name, date of birth, nationality, signature and residence status); a document showing you no longer have an address in Japan (a copy of the removal from your resident record — not needed if you filed the moving-out notice); a document showing the bank name, branch name, branch address, account number and that the account is in the claimant's own name; and a document showing your basic pension number.
• After payment: send the decision notice to your tax agent. JPS sends a “payment decision notice” with the remittance. Send the original to your tax agent.
• From January 1 of the following year: file the selective-taxation return. In the NTA's worked example, the “return for selective taxation of retirement income” is filed with the tax office that has jurisdiction over your tax residence on or after January 1 of the year after the payment. The return is for the year in which the payment was decided (the example, decided in 2025, is a Reiwa 7 return). National Pension payments have no tax withheld, so this step does not apply to them.

How much you receive

The National Pension amounts, if the last month you paid contributions falls between April 2026 and March 2027, are as follows (JPS table; examples of the month bands).

For the Employees' Pension, the payment is your average standard remuneration over the insured period multiplied by a payment rate that depends on the months (5.5 at 60 months or more). The table below uses assumed months and remuneration.

Do you get the 20.42% back? Examples that are refunded in full, and in part

With selective taxation, the payment is taxed as if you had received it as a resident, and the tax is recalculated. For an Employees' Pension payment the service period is 5 years or less, so it is treated as a short-term retirement allowance: the retirement income deduction is ¥400,000 × years (¥800,000 if that is less), and half of the amount above the deduction is taxed, up to ¥3 million of that amount.

When the payment fits inside the retirement income deduction (the first three rows), the recalculated tax is ¥0 and everything withheld is refunded. The NTA's own example is the same: a payment of ¥291,478, tax withheld of ¥59,519 and a deduction of ¥800,000, refunded in full. Someone with a high average standard remuneration and 60 months of coverage pays tax on the part above the deduction, so not everything comes back — but the refund is still much larger than leaving the 20.42% withheld.

Common mistakes

• Filing before the moving-out date. You need to have no address in Japan on the day JPS accepts the claim, so even filing from Japan, file on or after the planned date.
• Leaving on a re-entry permit without a moving-out notice. You stay insured until the permit expires and cannot claim.
• Leaving without a tax agent. You can submit the notification with your return, but doing it before you leave makes the return and the refund smoother.
• Giving someone else's bank account. JPS requires a document showing the account is in the claimant's own name. Receiving the tax refund is a separate procedure.
• Missing the 2-year deadline, counted from the day you stopped having an address in Japan.

Checked on October 2, 2026. JPS's page on the system (updated April 1, 2026) still counts at most 60 months. The calculator's FAQ covers the planned review of that cap. The rules can change, so confirm the current ones with JPS and the tax office before you claim. The tables in this guide use assumed figures; they are examples, not the amount of any individual claim.