If you work for yourself in Japan, the salary calculator on Japan Life Hub showed you more money than you would keep. It took ¥650,000 off for a blue return whether you filed one or not, and it left business tax (個人事業税) out. At ¥5,000,000 of sales and ¥1,000,000 of expenses, that made the take-home from the second year ¥55,000 a year too high. I fixed both.
Two questions it used to skip
Pick Self-Employed and the calculator now asks how you file: a blue return sent by e-Tax (¥650,000 off), a blue return on paper (¥550,000), a blue return with simple books (¥100,000) or a white return (nothing off). These are the three amounts in the National Tax Agency's rules for the blue return.
It also asks for your business tax rate: 5% for most businesses on the list, 4% for livestock and fishery, 3% for massage and acupuncture, or none if your work is not one of the 70 listed businesses.
Business tax is charged on the year before, on business income above ¥2,900,000 with the blue return deduction added back. So it appears from Year 2+, next to resident tax. In the example it is ¥55,000 a year. With a white return instead of e-Tax, the same freelancer keeps ¥2,856,481 from the second year instead of ¥3,031,051.
Every step, with its source
On the calculator page in Japanese, Russian, Hindi, Chinese, Indonesian and Vietnamese, a freelancer's year is now worked out under the employee example: business income, national health insurance part by part at the 23 wards' 2026 rates, national pension, income tax, resident tax and business tax. Each line shows its multiplication, and each rate links to the page it comes from, eight pages in all.
