Furusato Nozei Calculator (ふるさと納税)

It's a Japanese tax program that lets you 'donate' to a municipality of your choice, receive a thank-you gift (返礼品) worth up to roughly 30% of the donation, such as local food, crafts, or vouchers, and get almost the entire donation back as a deduction against your national income tax and next year's resident tax. Donate within your personal cap and your real out-of-pocket cost stays a flat ¥2,000 (self-burden), no matter how much you donate up to that limit, while you keep the gift. It's effectively a way to redirect a slice of tax you'd pay anyway toward a municipality you choose, in exchange for a small gift and a ¥2,000 fee.

The portion above your cap loses the enhanced Furusato Nozei treatment (the special resident-tax deduction), though it can still qualify for the ordinary donation income-tax deduction available to any charitable gift in Japan, a much smaller benefit. In practice, donating over your cap means the excess is largely a straightforward donation out of your own pocket, still generous, but no longer close to 'free' the way donations within the cap are.

This calculator estimates your taxable income from salary alone. Any other deduction you claim, medical expenses, iDeCo/DC pension contributions, life insurance premiums, dependents, the home loan (住宅ローン) deduction, and more, reduces your ACTUAL taxable income below the salary-only figure used here, which in turn lowers your real cap. If you claim any of these, treat this calculator's figure as an upper bound, not a guarantee, and check the official portal's more detailed calculator (which lets you enter other deductions) before donating close to your limit.

Yes. If you use the 'One-Stop Exception' (ワンストップ特例制度), available if you donate to 5 or fewer municipalities in the year and don't otherwise need to file a tax return, each municipality handles the resident-tax deduction automatically and you don't need to file anything extra. If you donate to more than 5 municipalities, or need to file a return for any other reason, you must claim ALL your Furusato Nozei donations for the year via your annual kakutei shinkoku (確定申告) tax return instead, missing this step means losing the deduction entirely, even for donations comfortably within your cap.

Yes. The cap formula is recalculated each calendar year from that year's own income and deductions, and donations must be made within the SAME calendar year (by 31 December) they're meant to count against. A bonus, raise, job change, or new deduction partway through the year shifts your real cap for that year, this calculator's figure is only a snapshot based on the annual salary you enter, so revisit it if your income changes materially.

There has been discussion of an additional absolute ceiling (around ¥1.93 million in special deduction) targeting very high earners, reportedly intended to apply from 2027 donations onward under recent tax reform discussions. As of this calculator's most recent verification, that change is NOT confirmed to apply to 2026 donations, so it is not applied here. If you're a very high earner planning large donations near year-end, it's worth double-checking the current confirmed status of that rule before assuming your 2026 cap is unaffected.

Generally, thank-you gifts received through Furusato Nozei are treated as miscellaneous income (一時所得) for tax purposes, but a standard ¥500,000 annual exemption for that income category means most people's combined gifts across all their donations in a year fall comfortably under it and generate no additional tax. Only very large-scale donors receiving gifts collectively worth more than that exemption in a single year would need to consider this.

It uses 2026 employment income deduction, social insurance, and basic deduction figures from lib/jp-tax.ts to estimate taxable income and the resident tax income levy, then applies the standard, stable Furusato Nozei cap formula published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. It assumes a salary-only taxpayer with no other significant deductions, single filer, and does not apply the discussed (not yet confirmed for 2026) high-earner absolute cap. This is a planning estimate: confirm your exact figure with the official portal's detailed calculator or a tax professional before donating near your limit.