Buying or Selling in Japan Near Year-End? Whoever Owns It on 1 January Pays the Whole Year

If you are buying or selling a Japanese property in the next few months, there is one date that decides more than any other: 1 January.

Japan does not split property tax between the people who owned a building during the year. It charges the whole year to whoever owned it on a single day. Everything else — the apportionment you will see on the settlement statement, the figure your agent calculates — is private arrangement between the two parties, not tax law.

Overseas owners get caught by this twice: once on the money, and once on the post.

At a glance

Question	Short answer
Who is liable for the year's tax?	Whoever owned the property on 1 January of that year.
I sold in June. Do I still owe it?	Yes. The municipality bills you for the full year.
Doesn't the buyer take over part of it?	Only if the contract says so. It is a custom, not a right.
Who receives the bill?	The 1 January owner, at the address on record, usually in April–June.
Is the split the same everywhere?	No. Eastern Japan usually counts from 1 January, western Japan from 1 April.
I am buying in December. What changes?	If registration completes before 1 January, the whole of next year is yours.
I live abroad. Anything else?	Yes — the notice is posted in Japan. You need a tax representative to receive it.

The rule

Fixed asset tax (固定資産税) and, in urbanisation areas, city planning tax (都市計画税) are charged on the person recorded as the owner on the assessment date, which is 1 January. The tax is then billed for that fiscal year, normally in four instalments beginning in spring.

There is no concept of a part-year owner. If you owned the property on 1 January and sold it on 2 January, you are still the person the municipality bills for the entire year — and they will not refund a part of it because you no longer own the building.

That is the whole mechanism, and it is why the rest of this article exists.

The apportionment nobody is entitled to

Because the outcome above is obviously rough on a seller, Japanese practice settles it privately. On completion, the buyer reimburses the seller for the part of the year after handover. You will see it on the settlement statement as 固定資産税の精算 or similar, usually a few tens of thousands of yen.

Two things about this surprise people who are used to other countries:

• It is a custom, not a legal right. No law requires the buyer to pay anything. If the contract is silent, a seller who assumed a reimbursement has no claim, and a buyer who was told to expect a credit has none either. It works because it is written into the contract — nothing else makes it work.
• The municipality is not involved. The tax office keeps billing the 1 January owner, year in and year out, until the register changes. The money that changes hands at completion is between the two parties only.

The regional difference that changes the number

Here is the part that catches foreign buyers who compare two deals and cannot work out why the figures look inconsistent.

The apportionment needs a start date for the year being divided, and Japanese practice has two:

Region	Period usually used
Eastern Japan (Kanto and much of the north)	1 January to 31 December
Western Japan (Kansai and much of the west)	1 April to 31 March

Neither is prescribed by law. Both are local convention, and the choice changes who pays what. Take an annual tax of ¥120,000 and a handover on 31 October:

	Counting from 1 January	Counting from 1 April
Days charged to the seller	1 Jan – 30 Oct (303 days)	1 Apr – 30 Oct (213 days)
Days charged to the buyer	31 Oct – 31 Dec (62 days)	31 Oct – 31 Mar (152 days)
Buyer reimburses roughly	¥20,400	¥50,000

Same property, same day, same tax — and a difference of about ¥30,000 depending on which convention the contract uses. On a large property the gap is correspondingly larger.

The answer is not to argue about which convention is correct. It is to make sure the contract states the start date and the method, so that both sides are calculating the same thing.

What this means if you are buying

• Completing in December versus January is a real difference. If the ownership transfer is registered before 1 January, the whole of the following year's tax is billed to you. Push past the new year and it is billed to the seller, who will usually ask you to reimburse the part after handover.
• Check the start date in the contract before you sign, not at the closing table.
• The first bill will not come to you. In the year you buy, the notice goes to the seller as the 1 January owner. Your first notice arrives the following spring.
• Budget for the real figure. The apportionment is a one-off; what matters for holding the property is the annual bill. Our non-resident property tax guide sets out what to expect.

What this means if you are selling

• You remain the taxpayer for the whole year of the sale, and for the following year too if the transfer is registered on or after 1 January.
• Make sure the reimbursement is in the contract. Verbal agreement is worth nothing here.
• Keep paying the instalments. The notice is addressed to you. Ignoring it because you no longer own the property leads to arrears in your name, with late charges.
• Tell the municipality your new address, and note that since April 2026 registering a change of address has been compulsory — see our guide.

The part that hurts overseas owners most

The money is predictable. The post is not.

The tax notice is paper, in Japanese, posted to an address in Japan, with payment slips attached. A municipality will not post it overseas as a matter of course, and it does not email.

So an overseas buyer who completes in, say, November and does nothing else reaches the following spring with a notice that has been issued, is due, and has arrived nowhere. Nobody tells you. What arrives later is a demand, and then late charges, and in the worst cases a seizure procedure against a property whose owner has simply never seen a letter.

The fix is the one Japan designed for exactly this: appoint a tax representative (納税管理人) — a person or company in Japan who receives the notices and pays them on your behalf. It is a simple notification to the municipality, and it is the single most useful thing a non-resident owner does in the first month of ownership. See how to appoint one, and how the role differs from a domestic manager and a contact address.

A short checklist for a year-end transaction

1. Confirm the planned registration date — before or after 1 January — and which side that puts the next year's tax on.
2. Confirm the apportionment start date written in the contract (1 January or 1 April) and the method.
3. If you are buying, appoint a tax representative now, not next spring.
4. Check that the address on the register is current, for both sides.
5. Keep the settlement statement: it is the evidence of what was apportioned and when.

How Japan YES helps

We act as the tax representative and the contact address in Japan for owners who live abroad. The tax notice comes to us, we scan and translate it so you can see what it says, and we pay it from funds you send us — so the first spring after your purchase passes without anything landing in a letterbox nobody opens.

Tell us about the property, or compare plans — from ¥66,000 a year, tax included.

This article explains the general rule and common market practice; it is not tax advice. The apportionment in your transaction is whatever your contract says it is, and a Japanese tax accountant (税理士) can advise on your own position.