Japan Statutory social-insurance contributions

What this value means

WHAT A PAYROLL ENGINE GETS WRONG IN JAPAN. 1. THERE IS NO SINGLE JAPANESE HEALTH-INSURANCE RATE, AND SERVING ONE IS THE COMMONEST ERROR. Kyokai Kenpo sets a 都道府県単位保険料率 for each of the 47 prefectures under 健康保険法 art. 160(1), recalculated every year from that prefecture's per-head medical spend after adjusting for age structure and income. FY2026 spread: Okinawa 9.44% at the bottom, Saga 10.55% at the top, national average 9.90%. TOKYO'S 9.85% IS SERVED HERE AS THE NAMED REFERENCE CASE and must be swapped for the correct prefecture in production. The key is the prefecture of the 適用事業所 — the establishment where the employee is enrolled — not the employee's residence. 2. A SECOND POPULATION IS OUTSIDE THIS RECORD ENTIRELY. Employees of large firms are typically enrolled in the employer's own 健康保険組合 (kenpo kumiai) rather than Kyokai Kenpo. Those societies set their own health and long-term-care rates independently within the same 3.0%–13.0% statutory band, and under 健康保険法 art. 162 they may set an UNEQUAL split with the employer bearing more than half. Only the Kyokai Kenpo case is priced here. Pension, employment insurance, accident insurance and the child-rearing levy are unaffected by which health fund the employee belongs to. 3. FOUR DIFFERENT CHANGE DATES IN ONE SPRING, AND THEY ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE. (a) Health and long-term-care rates changed from the MARCH 2026 salary month, remitted in April. (b) The 子ども・子育て支援金 started from the APRIL 2026 salary month, remitted in May. (c) The employment-insurance rate changed on 1 APRIL 2026 for the year to 31 March 2027. (d) 標準報酬月額 grades are re-fixed each SEPTEMBER by the 定時決定, from the April–June average. March 2026 payroll therefore carries the new health rate but not the support levy; April 2026 carries both plus the new employment rate; September 2026 re-grades everybody. A single "effective 1 April 2026" assumption misprices March. 4. A NEW BRANCH APPEARED IN APRIL 2026. The 子ども・子育て支援金 (0.23%, split 0.115% each side) is levied on every insured employee under the Child and Child-rearing Support Act as amended by Act No. 47 of 2024. Any Japanese payroll table built before 2026 is simply missing it. It is nationwide-uniform, it applies regardless of whether the employee has children, and its rate is designed to rise as the scheme phases in — re-verify every spring. 5. TWO DIFFERENT GRADE TABLES, AND TWO DIFFERENT KINDS OF BONUS CAP. Pension uses 32 grades from 88,000 to 650,000 yen with a bonus cap of 1,500,000 yen PER PAYMENT. Health, long-term care and the child-rearing levy use 50 grades from 58,000 to 1,390,000 yen with a bonus cap of 5,730,000 yen CUMULATIVE over the April–March year. The bonus caps are not merely different numbers, they are different in kind — per-payment versus annual-cumulative. An engine that applies one table or one cap to both branches is wrong at both ends of the income scale. 6. EMPLOYMENT AND ACCIDENT INSURANCE HAVE NO CEILING AND NO GRADE TABLE AT ALL. Both are straight percentages of 賃金総額, actual wages paid. Do not push them through the 標準報酬月額 machinery: an executive on 2,000,000 yen a month pays employment insurance on the whole 2,000,000, while their health contribution stops at grade 50 and their pension at grade 32. 7. THE EMPLOYMENT-INSURANCE SPLIT IS UNEQUAL BY DESIGN. Employee 5/1,000 and employer 8.5/1,000 in general business. The gap is the 雇用保険二事業 portion (3.5/1,000, or 4.5/1,000 in construction), an employer-only levy for employment-stabilisation and skills programmes. There are three industry rates — general 13.5/1,000, agriculture-forestry-fishery-sake 15.5/1,000, construction 16.5/1,000 — and a Ministry footnote pulls horticultural services, horse and cattle raising, dairy, poultry, pig farming, inland aquaculture and certain seafarer businesses BACK into the general rate despite their sitting in the agricultural category. 8. LONG-TERM CARE IS AGE-GATED AT BOTH ENDS. 1.62% (0.81% each side) applies only from the month the employee turns 40 to the month they turn 65. At 65 the person becomes a 第1号被保険者 billed directly by their municipality — the employer must STOP deducting, and an engine that keeps the line running is over-deducting. Pension contributions separately cease at age 70, while health insurance continues past both thresholds. 9. WORKERS' ACCIDENT INSURANCE IS EMPLOYER-ONLY, RISK-RATED, AND ITS MAXIMUM IS WIDELY MISQUOTED. 54 industry categories, verified range 2.5/1,000 to 88/1,000. Secondary commentary very often gives the maximum as 52/1,000, which is the FORESTRY line; the true top is 88/1,000 for metal, non-metal and coal mining. The merit system can move an individual employer's rate by up to ±40%. 労災 covers every worker including part-timers and day labourers who are outside 雇用保険. 10. THE 18.3% PENSION RATE IS FROZEN, NOT INDEXED. It reached its terminal statutory value in September 2017 and the Act schedules no further step. Unlike almost every other line on a Japanese payslip it does not move in April. Re-verification effort belongs on the health, care, child-rearing and employment rates, not here. 11. EMPLOYEE CONTRIBUTIONS ARE FULLY DEDUCTIBLE FOR INCOME TAX. All employee-side social-insurance premiums fall within 社会保険料控除 (所得税法第74条) with no cap, so 所得税 and 住民税 are computed on pay AFTER social insurance. Japan is the opposite of the South African pattern in which employee contributions get no relief. Employer-side contributions are a deductible business expense. 12. THE MONTH-OF-DEDUCTION CONVENTION CAUSES OFF-BY-ONE ERRORS. Health, care and pension premiums for a given month are conventionally deducted from the FOLLOWING month's salary and remitted by the end of that following month. A leaver's final payslip therefore commonly carries two months of premiums, or none, depending on the day of separation — because insured status is lost on the day AFTER the last day of employment, and no premium is due for the month in which insured status ends unless it ends on the last day of that month. SUB-NATIONAL VARIATION: REAL AND MATERIAL, on exactly one branch. The health-insurance rate varies across all 47 prefectures (FY2026: 9.44%–10.55%). Long-term care (1.62%), the child-rearing levy (0.23%), pension (18.3%), employment insurance and the accident tariff are all nationally uniform, and there is no prefectural or municipal payroll tax layered on top. Model prefecture as a rate dimension for health insurance ONLY. WHAT WE DO NOT PUT A NUMBER ON, DELIBERATELY. 労災保険 EMPLOYER RATE AS A SINGLE FIGURE — rate_employer stays null. There is genuinely no national rate; it is set per industry category. The verified endpoints (2.5/1,000 and 88/1,000) and a set of representative category rates are served in the branch notes, but the full 54-row table is not reproduced here and the correct row must be read off the 労災保険率表 for the employer's 業種番号. KENPO KUMIAI RATES — not priced. Each of the roughly 1,400 company health-insurance societies sets its own rate and its own employee/employer split. There is no national table to serve. THE 46 NON-TOKYO PREFECTURAL HEALTH RATES — not enumerated here beyond the published minimum, maximum and average. They are all published by Kyokai Kenpo in the FY2026 rate notice; only the named reference case is priced. MERIT-SYSTEM ADJUSTED 労災 RATES — not modelled. The ±40% adjustment is applied to an individual employer by the Labour Bureau on that employer's own accident record and cannot be derived from public data. ALREADY LEGISLATED, NOT YET IN FORCE / WATCH LIST. (1) The 子ども・子育て支援金 rate is phased and is expected to step up in FY2027 and FY2028 as the scheme reaches full funding — re-verify in February–March each year when the Children and Families Agency publishes the coming year's rate. (2) Kyokai Kenpo's prefectural health rates and the nationwide care rate are re-set EVERY year and announced around February, effective from the March salary month — a February–March re-check is mandatory, not optional. (3) The employment-insurance rate is re-set annually with effect from 1 April and moved DOWN in both FY2025 and FY2026; the Ministry publishes the leaflet in March. (4) The 労災保険率表 was last revised on 1 April 2024 and is confirmed unchanged for FY2026; revisions have historically come at three-year intervals, so the next is plausible for FY2027. (5) The 18.3% pension rate has no scheduled change. SOURCING CAVEATS. Everything served is read from a primary instrument or the administering institution's own current rate publication. Residual limits, stated plainly: the employment-insurance and workers'-accident figures were read directly from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's own PDFs — the FY2026 rate leaflet and the 労災保険率表 respectively — and are exact. The Tokyo health rate, the 1.62% care rate and the 0.23% child-rearing levy are read from Kyokai Kenpo's own FY2026 rate notice and quoted verbatim above. The pension rate, its split, the grade ranges and the bonus caps are read from Japan Pension Service's own pages; I did not open the text of 厚生年金保険法 art. 81(4) itself, so that article number is cited from the standard consolidation rather than verified against the statute. The count of 54 industry categories in the 労災保険率表 is my own count off the Ministry's table. The 3.0%–13.0% statutory band for prefectural health rates is cited from the standard reading of 健康保険法 art. 160(1) and was not verified against the section text. Employee and employer shares are stated separately: the employee figure is what leaves the payslip, the employer figure is cost of employment and is not a deduction.

Get it programmatically

curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/jp/social-contributions
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/jp/social-contributions/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://asiaref.dev/provenance/jp/social-contributions

By subdivision

ISO 3166-2 — 47 subdivisions held. A subdivision that does not appear below has NOT been researched, and must not be read as having no value: where a subdivision genuinely has none, it is listed with an explained null and a citation for the absence.

Other Japan series: policy interest rate · Statutory interest (法定利率) · Consumption tax (standard rate) · VAT registration threshold · Minimum wage (lowest prefectural regional minimum wage) · Public holidays · Consumer price inflation (CPI, all items, year-on-year) · Corporate income tax (national corporation tax, standard rate) · Withholding tax rates · Personal income tax (national, progressive bands)

The same figure elsewhere: Jordan · Kazakhstan · Kuwait · Malaysia · Nepal · all 28