In Japan, people who lose their earnings to illness, job loss or parental leave are billed local income tax calculated on last year's salary. The relief system meant to protect them almost never works. We surveyed 280 of them, across 187 municipalities — data no government body collects.
Team Give It Back was formed by people billed for tax on income they had already lost. We are not affiliated with any party or company. Everything on this page comes from our own survey of petition signatories and from Japanese government documents.
Three features combine to produce the harm. Each exists in Japanese law today.
Residence tax (jūminzei), the local income tax collected by all 1,741 municipalities, is assessed on the previous year's earnings and collected from June of the following year. Up to 17 months pass between earning and the final instalment. National health insurance premiums work the same way and arrive at the same time.
Municipalities may reduce or waive the tax in hardship cases. For disasters, the national government issues numerical criteria that every municipality follows. For illness and unemployment, it issues none — leaving 1,741 different local rules, many of them unpublished.
Japanese administrative law requires agencies to publish review criteria and to accept and answer applications. Tax relief is expressly exempted. If a clerk turns someone away before a form is filed, no application legally exists, no decision is issued — and there is nothing to appeal.
280 responses from people who signed the petition, covering tax bills from 187 municipalities across Japan. The survey remains open. No ministry or municipality collects this data.
The person who started the petition. His documents are available to journalists on request.
He left work because of illness and earned nothing that year. He was billed ¥600,000 in residence tax, ¥900,000 in health insurance premiums and ¥200,000 in pension contributions — about ¥1.7 million (roughly US$11,000) — while also needing to fund surgery. When he telephoned his city hall to ask about relief, he was told his previous year's income was too high for him to even submit an application, and that there was nothing further they could tell him. He recorded the exchange in a written submission to the city's official comment channel about an hour after the call. The city later told a member of the municipal assembly, in writing, that an application would in fact have been accepted and reviewed.
Of the eight countries we compared, Japan is the only one that taxes on prior-year income while offering no statutory protection when income collapses.
| Country | Tax base | When income collapses |
|---|---|---|
| Germany, France, United Kingdom, Sweden, United States, South Korea | Current-year income | The tax falls automatically as income falls. No application, no discretion, no counter to be turned away from. |
| Japan | Previous-year income | The full bill stands. Relief is discretionary, often unpublished, and cannot be appealed if refused before an application is filed. |
France completed its move to current-year withholding in 2019. Japan's own government tax commission recommended current-year taxation in 1968 — 58 years ago — and official documents have called it "desirable" ever since. The stated obstacle has consistently been the administrative burden on employers and municipalities.
Four demands, submitted to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and to members of both houses of the Diet.
Assess residence tax on the income of the year in which it is earned, with a published timetable for the transition.
Until the transition is complete, set a single statutory standard for relief when income is lost to illness, unemployment, parental leave or caregiving.
Require municipalities to publish their criteria, accept applications, and issue written decisions — the ordinary duties of administrative procedure, from which tax relief is currently exempt.
Stop the seizure of salary the moment it reaches a bank account. Courts have ruled the practice unlawful, and the national tax agency already prohibits it for its own collectors — local tax collectors are not bound by that instruction.
We would rather state the limits ourselves than have them pointed out later.
Respondents are people who signed the petition. They are not representative of all taxpayers, and we do not present them as such. They are a record of what happened to those affected.
Amounts and dates come from respondents' own accounts. Monetary figures are estimated from banded answers and are described as approximate throughout.
No ministry publishes how many people request relief, how many are refused, or on what grounds. Until it does, this is the only national picture available.
We are looking for organisations, researchers and journalists working on taxpayer rights, economic and social rights, or social protection.
An opportunity to present these findings at an international forum on taxpayer rights or tax justice.
Consideration of this evidence in research or reporting on the intersection of taxation and human rights.
Coverage by journalists, including foreign correspondents based in Japan. Documents and interviews are available.
Anonymised survey data (280 responses), an English summary of the full findings, and supporting documents are available on request.