Japan Gift Tax Calculator (Calendar Year and Settlement-at-Inheritance Taxation, 2026)

Under calendar year taxation (暦年課税), gift tax is charged on the total value of gifts you receive between January 1 and December 31, after subtracting a basic exemption of ¥1.1 million. If the total is ¥1.1 million or less, no gift tax is due and no return is needed (National Tax Agency No.15002).

The exemption belongs to the recipient, not to each donor: however many people give you gifts in a year, you can subtract ¥1.1 million in total (No.4410, Japanese).

Special rates (特例税率) apply to gifts from a direct ascendant, such as a parent or grandparent, to a recipient who is 18 or over on January 1 of the year of the gift: for example grandfather to grandchild, or father to child. They do not apply to gifts from a spouse's parent.

General rates (一般税率) apply to everything else, such as gifts between siblings or between spouses, or from a parent to a child under 18. If you receive both kinds in the same year, the tax is computed on the whole amount at each set of rates and then apportioned by each kind's share of the gifts (No.4408, Japanese).

Calendar year taxation subtracts the ¥1.1 million basic exemption every year and taxes the rest at 10% to 55%. Settlement-at-inheritance taxation (相続時精算課税, in NTA's English pages the “taxation system for settlement at the time of inheritance”) can in principle be elected for gifts from a parent or grandparent aged 60 or over to a child or grandchild aged 18 or over. You file an election report for each donor, and once you elect it, gifts from that donor can never go back to calendar year taxation (No.15003).

Under this system you subtract a ¥1.1 million basic exemption each year (for gifts made on or after January 1, 2024) and then a special deduction of ¥25 million in total per donor; anything above that is taxed at a flat 20%. However, the value of the gifts at the time of the gift, less the annual ¥1.1 million, is added to the donor's estate when the donor dies, and gift tax already paid is credited against the inheritance tax. So it is a system taxed across gift tax and inheritance tax, and which is better depends on the size of the estate and on the timing and amount of the gifts.

Calendar-year gifts are also pulled back into the estate if they were made shortly before death. The look-back period is 3 years for a death on or before December 31, 2026, and 7 years for a death on or after January 1, 2031, lengthening gradually in between (No.4161, Japanese).

The main cases in the National Tax Agency's guidance are below; check each page for the full conditions.

• Money from a person obliged to support you (spouse, parent, child, sibling, etc.) for living or education expenses, within what is normally necessary. It must be spent on those expenses as needed; if it is saved, or used to buy shares or real estate, it is taxable (No.4405).
• Funds for acquiring a home, gifted by a direct ascendant, for gifts made from January 1, 2024 to December 31, 2026: up to ¥10 million for an energy-efficient etc. home and up to ¥5 million for any other home (No.4508). This calculator supports this exemption.
• A lump-sum gift for marriage and child-rearing expenses from a direct ascendant, up to ¥10 million, for gifts up to March 31, 2027 (No.4511).
• The spousal exemption: when residential property, or money to buy it, is given between spouses married 20 years or more, up to ¥20 million can be deducted in addition to the ¥1.1 million basic exemption, once in a lifetime per spouse (No.15004).
• Gifts from a corporation are subject to income tax, not gift tax (No.15002).

The exemption for lump-sum gifts for education expenses ended on March 31, 2026 without being extended. Amounts already covered before that date continue to be covered (No.4510).

File a return and pay at your tax office between February 1 and March 15 of the year after the gift, if your calendar-year gifts exceed ¥1.1 million, or if your settlement-at-inheritance gifts exceed ¥1.1 million. To elect settlement-at-inheritance taxation for the first time, submit the “Report on Selection of the Taxation System for Settlement at the Time of Inheritance” for each donor with your return. Tax is normally paid in cash in one payment; if the tax exceeds ¥100,000 and paying in cash by the due date is difficult, you can apply to pay in installments (No.15002 and No.4402).

Nationality alone does not decide it. What matters is whether you and the donor each had an address in Japan at the time of the gift, and in some cases your nationality and whether you had an address in Japan during the past 10 years. Someone temporarily away from Japan, for example studying or on a business trip abroad, is treated as still having an address in Japan.

If you have an address in Japan when you receive the gift and you are not a “temporary resident” (一時居住者), the gift is taxable in Japan whoever the donor is and wherever the assets are located. A temporary resident is a person who holds one of the residence statuses in Table 1 of the Immigration Control Act and has had an address in Japan for a total of 10 years or less in the 15 years before the gift. For temporary residents, and for recipients who have no address in Japan, some donor and recipient combinations are taxed only on assets located in Japan. The National Tax Agency's table sets out each combination (No.4432, Japanese). A recipient with no address in Japan who has to file must appoint a tax agent (納税管理人) and file a notification.

This calculator takes the amounts you enter as taxable gifts. It does not decide whether a gift is taxable in Japan at all.

Gift values (property valuations for real estate, shares, etc.) are used exactly as entered. The spousal exemption, the marriage and child-rearing funds exemption, foreign tax credits, checking the conditions for the home-acquisition exemption, and apportionment among several designated donors in the same year are not included. Neither is the effect on inheritance tax (the inheritance tax on the amount added back to the estate). For the mortgage tax credit when you buy a home, see the Housing Loan Deduction calculator (Japanese).