Selling from abroad

In short

• When a non-resident sells, the buyer keeps back 10.21 per cent of the price and pays it to the tax office, before you see the rest.

• That withholding runs on the full price, not on your gain, so it happens even when you sell at a loss.

• The tax actually due is settled later by a filing in Japan, made through your tax agent, and the withheld amount often comes partly back.

• Whether you also owe residents' tax hangs on one date: where you live on 1 January of the year after the sale.

• Without your purchase documents, the law lets you claim only 5 per cent of the sale price as cost, which can turn a modest gain into a large one.

• An address-change duty with a penalty now sits on owners who moved abroad and never updated the register, so the paperwork side starts before the listing does.

The number most sellers abroad meet first is not a tax rate. It is the hole in the settlement statement.

Understand why the hole is there and how it closes, and selling from abroad becomes a sequence rather than a shock.

The 10.21 per cent that leaves first

Japan collects from a non-resident seller at the source. Whoever buys from you and pays the price must withhold 10.21 per cent, income tax plus the recovery surcharge, and hand it to the tax office; the duty sits on the buyer, companies and private individuals alike. There is one exception, and all three of its conditions must hold at once: the buyer is an individual, buying for their own or their family's residence, and the total price is 100 million yen or below. A company buyer, or an investment purchase, or a bigger ticket, and the withholding applies.

The base is the price, not the profit.

Sell for 30 million yen and 3,063,000 leaves at settlement whatever you paid to acquire, and a sale at a loss is withheld like any other. The money is not a final tax but a deposit against one, and the mechanism that reconciles it is the filing described below.

A treaty with your home country does not switch this off.

The deadlines belong to the buyer: payment to the tax office by the 10th of the month after settlement, or the end of that month when a buyer who keeps an address, residence or office in Japan pays the price abroad. What belongs to you is knowing, before you price the sale, that a tenth of the price arrives on a delay.

The tax that is actually due

The real tax is on the gain, and Japan sizes it by the calendar. Held for more than five years, the gain is taxed at 15 per cent plus the recovery surcharge. Five years or under, 30 per cent plus the surcharge, roughly double. The count runs to 1 January of the year you sell, not to your purchase anniversary. It is the same quirk we flagged in the holding-costs article, and it moves sale dates.

Residents pay an additional 5 or 9 per cent in local inhabitants' tax. Whether you do turns on a single date: inhabitants' tax attaches to whoever has an address in Japan on 1 January of the following year. Stay abroad through that date and the local layer does not arise; move back before it and it does. Between the two sits a difference of five to nine points on your gain, decided by a moving date.

The gain itself is price minus cost minus selling expenses, and the cost side is where sellers lose real money. Your cost includes what you paid, the purchase taxes and fees, and improvement works, with the building portion depreciated. But if you cannot document any of it, the law's fallback allows just 5 per cent of the sale price as cost, which taxes the other 95 per cent as if it were nearly all gain. The purchase file from years ago is worth actual money at this point; if you bought through this series of articles, keep everything.

There is a well-known 30 million yen deduction for selling your own home. Its written conditions include actually having lived in the house, with a sale no later than 31 December of the third year after the year you move out. The published conditions set no residency requirement on the seller. But the tax agency publishes no page confirming the non-resident case, so treat your eligibility as a question for the filing professional, not an assumption. A house you never lived in, run as a rental or lodging, is outside it either way.

Getting the money back

The reconciliation runs through Japan's filing season, 16 February to 15 March of the year after the sale. A non-resident files through a tax agent appointed beforehand, the same mechanism this series covered on the buying side. The agent files, the actual tax on the gain is computed, and the 10.21 per cent already sitting with the tax office is credited against it.

Modest gain, large refund; large gain, a further payment.

Two practical consequences follow. A seller who ignores the filing simply donates the excess withholding, and on a loss-making sale the donation is the entire 10.21 per cent. And since the agent must be in place by the time the return is filed, appointing one belongs to the sale's beginning, alongside the broker, not to its aftermath.

The sale itself, run from a distance

The brokerage contract has three legal forms, and the differences matter more when you are far away. Only the exclusive forms oblige the broker to register your property on the national listing system within days, business days counted. They also oblige a fixed reporting rhythm, every two weeks or every week depending on the form. The open form carries no listing duty and no reporting rhythm at all, which is a legal fact worth knowing when you wonder why nothing has arrived in your inbox.

Exclusive mandates are capped at three months and renew only on your word.

The register has to say who you are before it lets you sell. If you moved abroad and never updated your address, the mismatch between the register and your documents is formal grounds for rejecting the transfer. So the fix, an address-change registration, happens first, in practice filed together with the sale. This stopped being optional: since April 2026 an owner must register an address change within two years on pain of a civil fine, and changes from before that date have their own deadline in 2028. The seller abroad who has not thought about the register for a decade usually meets this rule at the worst possible moment, which is one more argument for starting the paperwork before the listing.

A seller abroad cannot produce the seal certificate a seller in Japan would, and substitute documents exist; exactly which ones depends on your nationality and your country of residence, so have your broker and the judicial scrivener name the exact set before anything is signed.

Prices, timing and the state of your particular market are questions this article does not answer. What it can say is fixed: the withholding, the calendar tests, and the register's demands are the same for every seller abroad, and every one of them rewards being handled at the start.

Questions sellers ask

Can the buyer and I just agree to skip the withholding? No. The duty is the buyer's, imposed by statute, and no agreement between the parties removes it. Expect any competent buyer's side to withhold without asking your opinion.

I am selling at a loss. Surely nothing is taken? It is. The withholding runs on the price, not the gain, so a loss changes nothing at settlement. What the loss changes is the filing afterwards, where the tax due is computed as nil and the withheld amount is reclaimed.

When should I return to Japan, if I plan to? After 1 January following the sale, if the inhabitants' tax matters to you. An address in Japan on that date attaches the local 5 or 9 per cent to the gain; an address abroad does not.

I have lost the purchase contract from twenty years ago. Look properly, because the difference is not small: documented cost is deducted, less depreciation on the building portion, and the fallback is 5 per cent of the sale price. The broker who handled your purchase, the scrivener who registered it and your lender all may hold copies.

Does my buyer being foreign change anything? The withholding turns on your status, not theirs. The exception turns on their side: an individual buying a home to live in at 100 million yen or below. A foreign resident of Japan buying your house to live in can qualify like anyone else.

Selling from abroad is three calendars run in parallel: the buyer's withholding deadlines, your filing season, and the 1 January tests. None of them is negotiable, and all of them are known on day one. To have the sequence mapped against a specific property, tell moogo what you own.

Written against published law and official sources as of 25 August 2026; rules change. 081株式会社 is a licensed real estate broker, not a tax or legal practice. This is general information, not advice on your situation, and case-specific decisions rest with the competent authority and your own professional.