Kyoto's Empty Home Tax: Who Pays, How Much, and When It Really Starts

If you own a house or an apartment in Kyoto and it sits empty between your visits, you have probably seen a headline about Kyoto taxing empty homes. You may also have read that it starts this year. It does not, and the gap between what the city has decided and what the internet says about it is wide enough to cause bad decisions.

This guide is built from Kyoto City's own published material: what the tax is, who pays it, what it costs, what gets you out of it, and what an owner living abroad should do about it.

At a glance

Question	Short answer
What is it called?	非居住住宅利活用促進税 — the Non-Resident Housing Utilisation Promotion Tax. Informally, 空き家税.
When does it start?	Fiscal year 2030 (令和12年度), judged on the situation as at 1 January 2030.
Was it not supposed to start earlier?	Yes — FY2029. The city postponed it by one year to build the assessment system.
Where does it apply?	Kyoto City only, and only inside the urbanisation promotion area (市街化区域).
What is taxed?	Housing in which nobody has their residence registered — vacant homes, holiday homes and second homes.
Is it instead of fixed asset tax?	No. It is charged in addition to fixed asset tax and city planning tax.
How is it paid?	In four instalments a year, by the owner.
Is there a minimum?	Yes. No tax where the building is assessed below ¥300,000 — below ¥1,000,000 for the first five years.

Why you may have read "2026"

The ordinance was passed by the city assembly in 2022 and cleared by the national government in March 2023, with the city publishing it in April 2023. At that stage the earliest possible start was described as being from around 2026, and a large number of articles were written on that basis. They were never updated.

Kyoto City's current position, stated at the top of its own page on the tax, is that taxation is scheduled to begin in 令和12年度 — fiscal year 2030, based on how each property is being used as at 1 January 2030, and that this is a one-year postponement from FY2029 caused by the work of building the system that assesses it.

That is four years away at the time of writing. It is long enough that nobody should be selling a Kyoto property in a hurry because of it, and short enough that it belongs in any plan for a property you intend to keep empty.

What counts as a non-resident home

The test is not whether the building looks abandoned. It is whether anybody has their residence registered there. A house that is beautifully kept, visited twice a year and registered to nobody is squarely within the tax.

Two points on how it is measured:

• For a condominium registered as separate units, each unit is judged on its own.
• For an apartment building or a rental house held as one property, the building is judged as a whole, and it falls within the tax only where there is no resident at all in it.

Holiday homes and second homes get no special treatment. This is deliberate: the stated purpose of the tax is to push housing in a city with very tight supply back into use as housing.

How much it costs

The tax has two components, added together.

Component	Base	Rate
家屋価値割 — building value	The building's assessed value for fixed asset tax	0.7%
立地床面積割 — location and floor area	Land assessed value per m² × the building's total floor area	0.15% where the building is assessed under ¥7m 0.3% from ¥7m to under ¥9m 0.6% at ¥9m and above

The second component is the one that bites. It multiplies the land value by the building's floor area, so a modest building on expensive central Kyoto land produces a much larger bill than the same building elsewhere in the city — which is the intended effect.

Three illustrations

These use assumed assessed values to show how the arithmetic works. They are not quotes, and assessed values are rarely what you paid.

	Old machiya	Renovated machiya	Central condominium
Building assessed value	¥800,000	¥5,000,000	¥10,000,000
Land value per m²	¥150,000	¥200,000	¥300,000
Floor area	60 m²	80 m²	70 m²
Building value part	¥5,600	¥35,000	¥70,000
Location and floor area part	¥13,500	¥24,000	¥126,000
Annual tax	¥19,100 (but nothing for the first five years — see below)	¥59,000	¥196,000

Two things follow from the table. A small, old, low-value machiya is barely touched, and may pay nothing at all for years. A well-restored property in a good street pays a real annual amount, every year, on top of the fixed asset tax it already pays.

What gets you out of it

The minimum threshold (免税点)

Where the building's assessed value for the year is under ¥300,000, no tax is charged. For the first five years of the tax that figure is ¥1,000,000. A great many genuinely old Kyoto townhouses are assessed below that, which is why the city expects the early years to fall mainly on higher-value property.

Business use (事業用)

Property genuinely used in a business is exempt. The clearest case is a property that is rented out — including a rental property that is temporarily between tenants. Property used by a company as an office or for staff accommodation can also qualify. What matters is that a real activity is taking place for proper consideration, not that a use has been declared on paper.

Marketing it for sale or rent — for one year only

A property being advertised for rent or for sale is exempt, but only within one year of the marketing starting. This is the trap for an absent owner. Listing a property indefinitely at a price nobody will pay does not keep it out of the tax; the exemption runs out and the tax starts.

Personal circumstances

The city's published questions and answers also recognise a limited set of personal situations — for example a temporary absence, admission to hospital or care, or a property recently received on a death. The list is specific and has its own conditions, so check the city's current guidance against your own facts rather than assuming you are covered.

What this means if you live outside Japan

Four practical consequences.

1. Keeping it empty for your own use is now a priced decision. That may still be the right decision — a place in Kyoto you can walk into whenever you like is worth something. It simply stops being free.
2. Renting it out is the exemption with substance. A genuine tenancy takes the property out of the tax and produces income against the holding costs. It also brings a Japanese tax return, a management company and a filing obligation, so it is a change of plan rather than a trick.
3. The bill arrives on paper, in Japanese, four times a year. A city tax notice goes to the registered owner at their registered address. If that address is abroad, or out of date, the notice does not reach you — and a demand that was never opened still becomes arrears.
4. You will need a tax representative. Japan expects an owner living overseas to appoint a 納税管理人 to receive and pay local tax on their behalf. Most Kyoto owners abroad already need one for fixed asset tax; this simply adds to what that person handles. Our guide explains how to appoint a tax representative, and how it differs from a domestic manager and a contact address.

The national picture: the direction of travel is the same

Kyoto is the first city in Japan with a tax aimed squarely at empty homes, and no other municipality has one in force. But the national rules have been moving in the same direction for longer.

Since the 2023 amendment to the Vacant Houses Special Measures Act, a municipality anywhere in Japan can designate a poorly maintained property as a 管理不全空家 — a step below the long-standing 特定空家 designation for dangerous buildings. Once a recommendation is issued on a designated property, the residential land discount that holds down fixed asset tax is withdrawn, and the land tax bill can multiply several times over.

The two mechanisms are different: Kyoto taxes emptiness, the national rules penalise neglect. The lesson for an overseas owner is the same one either way. A Japanese property that nobody visits, maintains or receives post for becomes progressively more expensive to hold — see our guide to the risks of leaving a Japanese property unmanaged.

What to do now

• Find your assessed values. The building value and the land value per square metre are on the fixed asset tax notice you receive each spring. They decide whether this tax will cost you ¥20,000 or ¥200,000 a year, and you can work it out today.
• Diarise 2029, not 2030. The snapshot is taken on 1 January 2030, so a decision to let, sell or move someone in has to be made and completed during 2029.
• Check that your registered address in Japan is current. Since April 2026, registering a change of address has been compulsory, and overseas owners cannot use the automatic update route available to residents — see our guide to address change registration.
• Make sure the post actually reaches you. Every part of this — the assessment, the exemption application, the instalment notices — arrives as Japanese paper mail.

How Japan YES helps

We act as the tax representative (納税管理人) and the contact address in Japan for owners who live abroad. The tax notices come to us, we scan and translate them so you can see what they say, we pay them from funds you send us, and we tell you when something needs a decision rather than a payment.

If you own property in Kyoto that sits empty, tell us about it and we will look at where you stand, or compare plans — from ¥66,000 a year, tax included.

This article explains a municipal tax in general terms and is not tax advice. Kyoto City publishes the ordinance and its guidance in full, and a Japanese tax accountant (税理士) can advise on your own position.