💴 Money, Tax & Insurance
How to Fill Out Your Year-End Tax Adjustment — List Your Family Back Home, Get Tax Back
Not knowing about "overseas dependents," some people overpay every year
📖 8 min read📅 2026-09-07
A coworker has the same salary, yet their take-home is more than mine. When I asked why, I was stunned. "It's because I claim my parents back home as dependents."
Grace (29), from Iloilo, the Philippines, has worked in Japan for three years. Every month, she sends money to her parents back home. One day, talking with a coworker at the same company who earns about the same salary, she noticed that her coworker's take-home was clearly higher than hers.
When she asked why, the coworker said: "On my year-end tax adjustment, I declare my parents back home as dependent relatives. If you're sending money home, Grace, you should be able to do it too."
Grace had no idea that system existed. Every year, she'd submitted the year-end tax adjustment documents the company gave her with the dependent-relative section left blank. Even though she was sending money home, she wasn't receiving the corresponding tax deduction. Over three years, by her calculation, she'd paid hundreds of thousands of yen too much in tax.
From the next year, Grace gathered the necessary documents (documents proving the family relationship and records of the remittances) and declared them. Then, at the year-end tax adjustment, tax came back to her. "To think I was losing this much just from not knowing," she told us.
The year-end tax adjustment is a system where, if you fill it out correctly, tax comes back. It has especially big meaning for foreign nationals supporting family back home. We've put the key points of how to fill it out into a checklist.
The year-end tax adjustment is a procedure where the company settles up your income tax for the year at year-end (if you overpaid, money comes back; if you came up short, more is withheld). For company employees, this generally means a tax return is unnecessary. The trick to avoiding losses is "not forgetting to write in" the items for which you can receive deductions. Please check the following.
01.Don't submit the three year-end tax adjustment forms blank
At year-end (around November–December), the company hands out mainly three documents: ① the "Dependent Deduction (Change) Report" (where you list dependent family members), ② the "Basic Deduction / Spouse Deduction, etc. Report" (where you list your own basic deduction and spouse), and ③ the "Insurance Premium Deduction Report" (where you list life insurance, earthquake insurance, etc.). Submitting these blank or filled in carelessly means you miss out on deductions you could receive. Be sure to fill in the applicable sections.
02.[Most important] You can claim family back home (overseas dependent relatives) as dependents
If you're financially supporting (sending money to) a parent, spouse, child, etc., living back home, you can declare that family member as a "dependent relative," and your tax goes down. The deduction amounts are: 380,000 yen per person for a general dependent relative (16 and over); 630,000 yen for those 19 to under 23; and 480,000 yen for those 70 and over (480,000 yen for a parent back home who doesn't live with you). Claim more people as dependents, and your deduction increases accordingly. People who are sending money home but not declaring it are losing money every year.
03.For family overseas, you need "documents proving the family relationship" and "documents proving the remittances"
To claim family overseas as dependents, you need two kinds of documents: ① "documents proving the family relationship" (a family register, or a birth certificate issued by a foreign government, etc., plus a copy of that relative's passport and the like — something that proves they are your relative), and ② "documents proving the remittances" (bank remittance records, or credit-card statements for a family card, etc. — something proving you are actually sending living expenses). Documents in a foreign language must have a Japanese translation attached. If you send money to the same family member 3 or more times a year, you can summarize using a statement plus the first and last remittance records.
04.[Careful from 2023] The conditions became stricter for relatives aged 30 to under 70
From the 2023 (Reiwa 5) tax year, to claim an overseas relative aged 30 to under 70 as a dependent, one of the following became necessary: (a) someone who has lost their address in their home country to study abroad (documents such as a student visa are also required), (b) someone with a disability, or (c) someone to whom you sent 380,000 yen or more in living expenses that year. In other words, to claim a working-age sibling back home, you need a remittance record of 380,000 yen or more per year. On the other hand, for relatives aged 16 to under 30, or 70 and over, this additional condition does not apply (documents proving the family relationship plus documents proving the remittances are enough).
05.There's also a condition on the "income" of the family you claim as dependents
You can claim as a dependent relative someone whose own total annual income is 580,000 yen or less (a guide is annual salary income of 1,230,000 yen or less; from the 2025 tax year, raised from 480,000 to 580,000 yen). Family living in your home country with no income in Japan usually meet this condition. For a spouse, there are separate frames called the "spouse deduction" and "special spouse deduction," with conditions such as your own (the worker's) income being 10 million yen or less.
06.Life insurance, earthquake insurance, iDeCo, and more also become deductions
Besides dependents, there are deductions you can declare on the year-end tax adjustment: ① premiums for life insurance, nursing-care medical insurance, and individual annuity insurance; ② earthquake insurance premiums; ③ iDeCo (individual-type defined contribution pension) contributions; and ④ social insurance premiums (if you paid National Pension or National Health Insurance yourself, separate from payroll deductions). Attach the "deduction certificates" that arrive from insurance companies around autumn to your report. Don't throw them away — keep them.
07.Even if you forget to write it in, you can recover it later with a tax return (for 5 years)
If you forget to write in a deduction on the year-end tax adjustment, don't give up. By doing a "tax return (refund claim)" yourself later, you can recover the tax you overpaid. A refund claim can be filed going back five years, from January 1 of the year after that year. In other words, even if you forgot to declare dependents in a past year, you may be able to receive a refund retroactively if it's within five years. You can do the procedure at the tax office or on the National Tax Agency's website (e-Tax).
Grace gathered her parents' birth certificates (with Japanese translations), copies of their passports, and her monthly remittance records, and declared them. Tax came back at the year-end tax adjustment, and she was even able to recover past years retroactively with a refund claim. "It really changes this much depending on whether you know the system," she told us. When you're unsure how to fill it out or which documents you need, you can consult your company's accounting or general affairs staff, or the tax office (free; crowded during the tax-return season). The National Tax Agency's website also has multilingual guidance.
