The short version

Gift tax is charged on the recipient, and the category decides the scope

Japan’s gift tax is charged on the person who receives the gift, and Inheritance Tax Act Article 1-4(1) sorts every recipient into one of four categories. Which category applies decides scope (the amount of property Japan actually reaches), not the rate.

The four categories in Article 1-4(1)

• (i) A domicile in Japan, not a temporary resident. The ordinary case for someone actually living here.
• (i), as a temporary resident. A narrower version of (i), covered in full in §4, that stops applying if the giver is a foreign donor or a non-resident donor, both defined terms.
• (ii)(a) No domicile in Japan, Japanese national. Split again: (1) a domicile in Japan at any time in the ten years before the gift, or (2) no domicile in Japan at any time within those ten years. The second is again subject to the same two exceptions about the giver.
• (ii)(b) No domicile in Japan, not a Japanese national. Subject to the same exceptions.
• (iii) / (iv). Everyone who does not fall into (i) or (ii) is taxed only on property located in Japan.

Everyone within categories (i) and (ii) is taxed on everything received, wherever in the world it is located. For (i)'s temporary-resident branch, (ii)(a)(2) and (ii)(b), this applies whenever the giver is neither a foreign donor nor a non-resident donor. Categories (iii) and (iv) are taxed only on property located in Japan (Art. 2-2(1) and (2)). The two exceptions that narrow (i)’s temporary-resident branch and (ii)(a)(2)/(ii)(b), namely a foreign donor and a non-resident donor, are defined terms we set out in full in §4, because they turn out to matter most for who is giving the gift, not who receives it.

Where the property sat is tested at the moment it was acquired

Separately from which category applies, Article 10 of the Inheritance Tax Act decides where a given piece of property is treated as sitting. A deposit, savings deposit or instalment savings (yokin, chokin, tsumikin) with a bank, a mutual loan company, the Shoko Chukin Bank, an agricultural or fishery cooperative, a credit cooperative, a shinkin bank or a labour bank is located where the office that received it sits (Art. 10(1)(iv), read with Article 1-13 of the Cabinet Order for the Inheritance Tax Act, which lists the deposits and institutions covered). The Act also mentions deposited money (kitakukin), but the Cabinet Order currently lists none, so kitakukin is not covered by this rule. The provision does not cover trusts in general: rights in a collective investment trust have their own rule (Art. 10(1)(ix)). Other movable and immovable property is located where it physically is; everything else falls back to the domicile of the person who gave it (Art. 10(3)). All of this is judged on the facts that existed at the moment the property was acquired (Art. 10(4)).

We are not going to say that wiring money into a Japan bank account converts it into Japan-situated property, or the reverse. The statute does not say that either. It sets a rule for each kind of property: a deposit sits where the branch that took it is (Art. 10(1)(iv)); shares and corporate bonds sit at the head office of the issuing company (Art. 10(1)(viii)); a loan receivable sits at the debtor’s address (Art. 10(1)(vii)); movable and immovable property sits where it physically is (Art. 10(1)(i)); Japanese government and municipal bonds are in Japan and a foreign state’s bonds are in that state (Art. 10(2)); and only what none of those rules reach falls back on the giver’s domicile (Art. 10(3)). These are applied to the facts as they stood at the moment of acquisition (Art. 10(4)). Which test actually governs a specific international transfer, and what was actually acquired at that moment, is a question of fact on the specific transfer, not something a general page can settle in the abstract.

Once you know which category and which scope apply, the rates, the ¥1,100,000 basic exclusion, and how the return itself works are covered in rates, the ¥1,100,000 basic exclusion and the filing mechanics.

“Living in Japan” is the base of your life, not a card and not a registration

The test the Inheritance Tax Act actually uses

The Act’s own basic circular (circular 1-3・1-4-5) puts the test in plain terms: domicile means the base of a person’s life, and whether a given place is that base is judged on objective facts. The same circular adds that one person cannot have two domiciles inside Japan at the same time.

A residence record is a separate legal duty, not the tax test

Registering a change of address within fourteen days is a duty under the Basic Resident Registration Act, and it is a duty that exists independently of gift tax. We searched the Inheritance Tax Act, its Cabinet Order and its Ministerial Ordinance, together with all thirty-five pages of the Inheritance Tax Act Basic Circular published by the National Tax Agency: none of them use a resident record or resident registration as the test for domicile. What they describe, instead, is the base of a person’s life. That does not make a registration irrelevant. A registered move is one of the objective facts a base-of-life determination can weigh. It is just not, on its own, the legal test.

Being outside Japan does not, by itself, decide the question

The income tax side has presumptions the Inheritance Tax Act does not

The Inheritance Tax Act, its Cabinet Order and its Ministerial Ordinance contain no presumption provision for domicile at all. The presumptions sit only on the income tax side. Under the Order for Enforcement of the Income Tax Act, Article 14(1) presumes that a person who has come to live in Japan has a domicile in Japan where certain listed facts exist. Article 14(2) extends that presumption to a spouse or other relative who shares the person's household and is supported by them, if they also live in Japan. Article 15(1) and (2) are the mirror rules: they presume that a person who has gone to live abroad, and household family members living abroad with them, do not have a domicile in Japan. That asymmetry is a fact about how the two statutes happen to be written, not a rule of thumb you can borrow across them.

The date of the gift is fixed by its own rule

When a gift actually takes effect follows its own rule (circular 1-3・1-4-8(2)), not automatically the date money moved, and not the date a family agreed something informally. A gift made in writing takes effect when the written contract does; a gift not made in writing takes effect when it is performed. Whether a given transfer happened before or after a move to Japan is decided by this rule. It is worth checking early, since this date and the date on a wire transfer are not necessarily the same one.

Japanese nationality removes the temporary-resident route entirely

Article 1-4(3)(i) of the Inheritance Tax Act defines a temporary resident as someone who, at the time of the gift, holds a status of residence (the Act defines that term for this purpose by reference to the upper column of Appendix 1 of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act only) and whose total time with a domicile in Japan, within the fifteen years before the gift, comes to ten years or less.

Appendix 2 of the same Immigration Act contains four statuses only: permanent resident, spouse or child of a Japanese national, spouse or child of a permanent resident, and long-term resident. None of these is the status of residence this provision is built on.

A person holding Japanese nationality, including a dual national, holds no status of residence at all, under the Immigration Act itself. So a Japanese-national spouse, and a dual-national child, cannot be within this definition to begin with; the question of whether they meet the ten-year test does not arise, because the definition does not reach them.

We checked this against the Immigration Act directly, not only the Inheritance Tax Act’s cross-reference to it. Article 2(i) defines a foreign national as a person who does not hold Japanese nationality. Article 2-2(1) provides that a foreign national residing in Japan resides under a status of residence. Article 2-2(2) states that the statuses of residence are as set out in the upper column of Appendix 1 or the upper column of Appendix 2. A person with Japanese nationality is, by Article 2(i), not a foreign national, and so is not someone who resides under a status of residence under Article 2-2(1) at all.

Dual nationality counts as Japanese nationality

Circular 1-3・1-4-7 confirms that a person with Japanese nationality, for the purposes of Article 1-4(1)(ii)(a), includes a dual national. Holding a second passport alongside Japanese nationality does not reopen the temporary-resident route.

And it may already be too late (Article 1-4(1)(ii)(a)(1))

A Japanese national who has had a domicile in Japan at any time within the ten years before the gift falls within category (ii)(a)(1), and is taxed on everything received, wherever it is located, even while currently living, and currently domiciled, outside Japan. For a spouse or child who lived in Japan at any point in the last decade (a prior posting, a period of schooling, anything with a Japan address attached), waiting to move back does not reset this clock. Whether that condition is actually met turns on a specific person’s residence history, and that is a question to check against the facts, not a general rule to apply from this page alone.

Who the donor is matters as much as who the recipient is

The exceptions that take a temporary resident out of category (i), and that take a recipient out of category (ii)(a)(2) or (ii)(b), apply only where the person giving the gift is one of two defined categories under Article 1-4(3). Category (ii)(a)(1) (a Japanese national with a domicile in Japan at any time in the ten years before the gift) has no such exception.

• A foreign donor (Art. 1-4(3)(ii)). Someone who, at the time of the gift, holds a status of residence listed in the upper column of Appendix 1 of the Immigration Act and has a domicile in Japan. This is the same Appendix-1-only meaning used in the temporary-resident test. A permanent resident, or anyone else on an Appendix 2 status, is not a foreign donor.
• A non-resident donor (Art. 1-4(3)(iii)). Someone with no domicile in Japan at the time of the gift, who either did not hold Japanese nationality at any time they had a domicile in Japan within the preceding ten years, or had no domicile in Japan at any time within that period.

A gift from a Japan-resident, Japanese-national spouse is neither of these. It is not from a foreign donor, because a Japanese national holds no status of residence and cannot meet that definition. It is not from a non-resident donor, because the giver has a domicile in Japan. So a gift from a Japanese-national spouse does not release the recipient from category (i) or (ii) by way of these exceptions. They were written for a different fact pattern than a mixed-nationality family living together in Japan. We cover the temporary-resident test as it applies to you, in full, including the complete definitions of foreign donor and non-resident donor, from the position of the foreign professional who might actually qualify.

Pre-funding living costs is tested under Article 21-3, and it has its own conditions

Who counts as a person with a duty of support

Article 1-2(i) of the Inheritance Tax Act defines a person under a statutory duty of support as a spouse, or a relative within the scope of Civil Code Article 877: lineal relatives and siblings, extended by family court order to a relative within the third degree. A spouse giving to a spouse, and a parent giving to a child, both sit within this relationship.

Three conditions, all of which have to hold

• The relationship. Between people under a statutory duty of support to each other.
• The purpose. Used for living costs or education costs.
• The amount. Normally regarded as necessary (Article 21-3(1)(ii)).

The National Tax Agency’s own Inheritance Tax Act Basic Circular fills in what the first two conditions mean: circular 21-3-3 defines living costs as the ordinary cost of daily life, apart from education, including things like medical and child-rearing costs; circular 21-3-4 defines education costs as school fees, materials and similar costs ordinarily necessary for education, not limited to compulsory schooling.

“As and when needed, applied directly”: what happens to a lump sum

Circular 21-3-5 goes further, and this is the part that matters most for a family moving in stages: it describes the exclusion as reaching property acquired by gift to be applied, as and when needed, directly, to living or education costs. Where money received in the name of living or education costs is instead placed on deposit, or applied to the purchase price of shares or of a house, the circular treats that amount as not normally regarded as necessary. A single transfer meant to sit in an account and be drawn down over several years is the fact pattern this circular describes directly, not a hypothetical near it. We do not describe this exclusion as unconditional: it reaches an amount only to the extent the three conditions in Article 21-3(1)(ii) are actually met on the facts of a given transfer.

There is no figure for “normally regarded as necessary”

Circular 21-3-6 tests the amount by weighing the dependant’s needs, the supporter’s means, and all the surrounding circumstances, against what is generally considered appropriate. No figure is stated anywhere in the statute, the circular, or the National Tax Agency’s public guidance for what counts as normally necessary, so this page does not state one either.

A change of title is a gift at that moment

Circular 21-3-7 treats renaming an asset (so that only its future income, rather than the asset itself, goes toward living or education costs) as a gift made at the moment of that renaming.

The housing-funds relief, the education lump sum (no contributions after 31 March 2026), the marriage and childcare lump sum, settlement-at-inheritance taxation, and the spouse deduction are separate statutory reliefs, each with its own conditions and its own filing requirements. We cover all of them, article by article, in home-purchase funds, the education lump sum, the spouse deduction and settlement-at-inheritance taxation.

Once you are here, the money you bring in has a third, separate test

Non-permanent resident is a nationality-and-count test

Income Tax Act Article 2(1)(iv) defines a non-permanent resident as a resident who does not hold Japanese nationality, and whose total time with a domicile or residence in Japan, over the ten years before the relevant date, comes to five years or less.

A person with Japanese nationality does not meet this definition. The nationality condition excludes them on its own terms. A dual national is excluded the same way. So for a Japanese-national spouse, or for a dual-national child, this entire category, and the remittance rule tied to it, does not arise at all. It is a question only for the family member who does not hold Japanese nationality. How the ten-year count is measured, and how it is split when someone’s category changes mid-year, is set out in the Income Tax Act Basic Circular. We do not repeat the mechanics here, since they belong on our page for non-permanent residents.

What Article 7(1)(ii) actually taxes

Under Income Tax Act Article 7(1)(ii), a non-permanent resident is taxed on all income other than foreign-source income, plus foreign-source income only to the extent it is paid in Japan, or remitted from abroad.

The queue: a remittance is applied to non-foreign-source income first

The Order for Enforcement of the Income Tax Act, Article 17(4)(i), sets an order rather than a blanket rule: a remittance received is treated, first, as applied (within its amount) to non-foreign-source income paid abroad, and only the remainder, if there is one, is treated as applied to foreign-source income. Sending money into Japan does not, on its own, automatically pull foreign-source income into the Japanese tax base; where a given remittance lands in this queue depends on what non-foreign-source income already exists to absorb it. We cover how the remittance rule works once you are here in full, including the mechanics of this queue.

The unit is the calendar year, and only the months you were a non-permanent resident

Order Article 17(4)(vi) applies this rule only to income that arose, and remittances that happened, within the period a person actually was a non-permanent resident, where that status changed partway through a year. A year before arrival, and the year of arrival itself, are measured separately on this basis, rather than as a single combined year.

“Remittance” is wider than a bank transfer

Circular 7-6 treats certain substitutes for an ordinary transfer as a remittance for this purpose: bringing precious metals, bonds, or share certificates into Japan in place of a transfer; and borrowing money, or having a payment made on your behalf, inside Japan, then repaying it using your own funds held abroad, where either of these is done in place of an ordinary remittance.

Filing, the deadline that moves, and foreign tax already paid

1 February to 15 March of the following year (unless you leave first)

Article 28(1) of the Inheritance Tax Act sets the ordinary filing window at 1 February to 15 March of the year after the gift. The same article brings the deadline forward where, between 1 January and 15 March of that following year, the recipient comes to have neither a domicile nor a residence in Japan without having notified a tax agent under Article 117(2) of the Act on General Rules for National Taxes: the return is then due by that day. More generally, under Article 117(1) and (2) of that Act, an individual taxpayer who has no domicile and no residence in Japan, or is about to cease having one, and who needs to file a tax return or deal with other national tax matters, must appoint a tax agent (someone with a domicile or residence in Japan) and notify the tax office of that appointment. Get this checked before a departure date is fixed, not after. For a family moving in stages, it can matter for more than one person’s return in the same year.

A credit exists for foreign gift tax on foreign property (within a formula)

Article 21-8 of the Inheritance Tax Act credits foreign gift tax against Japanese gift tax, but only within a formula: it reaches property located outside Japan on which that country’s own law charged something equivalent to gift tax, and the credit is capped at the Japanese gift tax otherwise due, multiplied by the share the foreign property represents of the total taxable gifts for the year. We do not identify, on this page, which country’s tax this reaches for your situation, or how it interacts with any tax treaty between Japan and that country. That has to be confirmed against the specific country and the specific tax involved.

The reverse direction has its own income tax rule

Income Tax Act Article 60-3(1) treats a resident’s securities as disposed of, at their value on that date, where they move by gift to a non-resident. Article 60-3(5) turns this off for a resident whose relevant holdings total under ¥100,000,000, or whose time with a domicile or residence in Japan over the ten years before the gift comes to five years or less. That count, as with the exit tax, leaves out periods spent on a status of residence in the upper column of Appendix 1 of the Immigration Control Act (Enforcement Order Art. 170-2(1), applying Art. 170(3)(i)). Once a family member becomes a Japan resident, and later gives securities to someone outside Japan, this is the provision to check, including securities that came from an employer share plan. We cover the deemed-disposal rules that run in the other direction (for a resident who is the one leaving Japan) on our exit tax page.

What the recipient carries afterwards

Receiving the property is one event. Holding it as a Japanese resident is another, and two consequences follow that are easy to miss when the planning stops at the transfer itself.

• The gift itself is outside income tax, but what it earns is not. Property acquired by gift from an individual is excluded from income tax (Income Tax Act, Art. 9(1)(xvii)). Gift tax, not income tax, is the charge that applies. Interest, dividends and rent produced by that property afterwards are ordinary income of whoever now owns it, under the rules that apply to that person’s residence status.
• The cost basis carries over. Where a resident later sells property received by gift, Article 60(1)(i) treats them as having held it continuously, so the original acquisition cost and holding period follow the asset. The value at the date of the gift does not become a fresh basis.
• A foreign asset report can follow. A resident who is not a non-permanent resident, and who holds more than ¥50,000,000 of property outside Japan on 31 December, must file a foreign asset report by 30 June of the following year (Act on Submission of Statements of Overseas Assets, Art. 5(1)). A Japanese-national spouse who moves to Japan is a resident who cannot be a non-permanent resident, so an overseas portfolio transferred before the move can bring this filing with it.

None of this changes whether the gift itself is taxed. It changes what the person receiving it has to do in the years after, which is part of the same decision.

What you get from us, and in what order

The deliverable is a written opinion in English, signed by the licensed tax accountant (zeirishi) who handled your matter. It sets out, for your facts: which category of Article 1-4(1) each recipient falls into, on each date that matters; which provision each transfer is tested under; what the statute and the National Tax Agency circulars actually say about it; and where the answer depends on facts we cannot verify. Where the authorities do not let us reach a conclusion, the opinion says so in those words.

How it runs

• Questionnaire. A written questionnaire, sent before any call: nationalities, dates of entry and departure over the last fifteen years for everyone involved, statuses of residence held, where each asset and each account sits, and what is actually intended.
• Call. One call to test those answers, and to reach the facts the questionnaire did not.
• Written opinion. Delivered in English, with the article, paragraph and item of each provision, and the circular number where a circular is doing the work. Sources are the statute on e-Gov and the National Tax Agency’s own pages.
• Filing, if a return is due. A gift tax return is prepared and filed by us. If anyone is leaving Japan, the tax agent notification is dealt with before, not after.

What the opinion is not

It is not a structure, and it does not come with a recommended sequence of transfers. Japan’s gift tax turns on facts on both sides of a transfer: who the donor was on that date, where each person’s base of life was, where the property sat. Those are findings, not choices. Where a date or a location is genuinely still open, we set out which provision each alternative lands in, and you decide with your advisers in the other country.

What the opinion does compare, where the facts are genuinely still open, is the Japanese tax treatment of the alternatives actually in front of you (when each person’s base of life moves, which property moves and when, and which route a transfer takes), together with the filings each alternative brings with it. What it will not do is select a version of the past that did not happen, or describe a transfer as something other than what it was.

Who this page is written for

For you if

• Your spouse or your children are moving to Japan on a different date from you, or have already moved.
• Your spouse holds Japanese nationality, or your children hold Japanese nationality alongside another.
• Transfers are expected to cross a date on which somebody’s base of life changes.
• More than one country’s transfer tax could reach the same property, and you already have advisers in the other country whose analysis has to be reconciled with Japan’s.
• The amounts are large enough that the difference between “all property” and “property situated in Japan” (Art. 2-2(1) against (2)) is the whole question.

Not this page if

• You want a Japanese tax return prepared for employment income, with or without a foreign element. That is a different service: have the return prepared and filed.
• You are the foreign professional yourself, and the question is your own position on an Appendix 1 status of residence. Start at the temporary-resident test as it applies to a foreign professional.
• You want rates, the basic exclusion, the filing calendar, home-purchase funds, the education lump sum, or settlement-at-inheritance taxation. See Japan Gift Tax: Rates, the Basic Exclusion and the Filing Deadline.
• You want us to design a transfer in order to reduce Japanese tax. We do not do that on this page, or anywhere else.

Common questions

My spouse and our children are moving to Japan before I do. Does that change how a gift to them is taxed?

It changes which category of Article 1-4(1) they fall into, and that decides scope rather than rate. A recipient in category (i) or (ii) is taxed on all property received; a recipient in category (iii) or (iv) is taxed only on property situated in Japan (Art. 2-2(1) and (2)). The category is tested at the time the property is acquired, and the time of acquisition has its own rule: for a gift made in writing, when the contract takes effect; otherwise, when it is performed (circular 1-3・1-4-8(2)).

Does a residence card or a resident registration decide whether I have a domicile in Japan?

The Inheritance Tax Act’s test is the base of a person’s life, judged on objective facts, and a person cannot have two domiciles in Japan at the same time (circular 1-3・1-4-5). Registering a move of residence within fourteen days is a separate obligation under the Basic Resident Registration Act. We searched the Inheritance Tax Act, its Cabinet Order and its Ministerial Ordinance, and all thirty-five pages of the Inheritance Tax Act Basic Circular published by the National Tax Agency: the words for resident record and resident registration do not appear as the test. That does not make a registration irrelevant. It can be one of the objective facts.

Can I send several years of living expenses in one transfer?

Article 21-3(1)(ii) excludes property received from a person with a duty of support, for living or education costs, to the extent the amount is normally regarded as necessary. Circular 21-3-5 reads that as property acquired to be applied to those costs as and when needed, and directly; it goes on to say that where money received in the name of living or education costs is put on deposit, or applied to the purchase price of shares or of a house, that amount is treated as not normally regarded as necessary. A single transfer intended to sit in an account and be drawn down over years is the case the circular describes. No amount is stated anywhere in the statute, the circulars or the National Tax Agency’s guidance for what is normally regarded as necessary (circular 21-3-6 gives only the needs of the dependant, the means of the supporter, and all the circumstances), so we do not state one either.

My children hold Japanese nationality and another nationality. Does the temporary-resident rule help them?

No, and for a structural reason. “Temporary resident” in Article 1-4(3)(i) is defined by reference to a status of residence in the upper column of Appendix 1 of the Immigration Control Act. Appendix 2 contains four statuses only (permanent resident, spouse or child of a Japanese national, spouse or child of a permanent resident, long-term resident), and a person with Japanese nationality holds no status of residence at all. A dual national counts as a person having Japanese nationality for Article 1-4(1)(ii)(a) (circular 1-3・1-4-7). Separately, note Article 1-4(1)(ii)(a)(1): a person with Japanese nationality who has had a domicile in Japan at any time in the ten years before the gift is within the full scope even while living abroad.

I will be a non-permanent resident when I arrive. Does that cover money I send to Japan?

Non-permanent resident is defined in Income Tax Act Art. 2(1)(iv) as a resident without Japanese nationality whose periods of domicile or residence in Japan over the past ten years total five years or less, so it does not apply to your Japanese spouse or to your dual-national children. For you, Art. 7(1)(ii) brings foreign-source income into charge to the extent it is paid in Japan or remitted from abroad, and Order Art. 17(4)(i) sets the order: a remittance is applied first to non-foreign-source income paid abroad, and only the remainder to foreign-source income. Order Art. 17(4)(vi) runs the calculation by calendar year and only over the months you were a non-permanent resident. Circular 7-6 treats certain substitutes for a transfer as remittances. Whether a transfer into your spouse’s own account is a remittance received by you is a question of fact on which we found no circular or published Q&A, and we do not assert an answer.

Where this page sits