taxes

Hello,

How are you all doing? Is there a difference between old akiya compared to a new house?

Hi Mr Kazu, good to see you here!

All good, I have been a bit busy recently because back in the UK at the moment, so next video is delayed by perhaps a week.

Regarding the property tax , I had to both google it and AI it to fact check , as I am not familiar with the intricates. Here is the overall picture I managed to build:

For the annual property tax there are no "bands" – the rate is the same for every house (1.4% fixed asset tax, plus about 0.3% city planning tax in urban areas). But in practice old and new houses pay very different amounts:

1. The tax is based on the assessed value of the building, and that value goes down as the house ages. My old akiya's building is assessed at almost nothing, so the building part of my tax bill is tiny. A new house is assessed much higher (new builds do get a temporary discount for the first few years, but on a much bigger number).

2. The land part is the same for both – if a liveable house stands on the land, the assessed land value is reduced to 1/6 (up to 200 sqm).

3. One thing akiya owners should know: since a 2023 law change, if a vacant house is badly neglected, the city can officially designate it as a "mismanaged" or "dangerous" vacant house. After a formal warning, the land loses that 1/6 discount and the land tax can jump up to 6x. It's not automatic – it only happens to houses left to rot after the city warns you – so basic upkeep (grass, roof, no collapse risk) keeps you safe.

One more difference that's not tax: houses built before 1981 are under the old earthquake standard, which mainly affects insurance, bank loans and some purchase tax reliefs – worth checking the build year before buying.

In reply to kazuw

What a coincidence! Same day I got a surprise letter from the Fukuoka Prefecture Tax Office at my UK home address!

It turned out to be the one tax I didn't mention above, because honestly I'd forgotten it existed: real estate acquisition tax (不動産取得税). It's a one-off prefectural tax you pay when you buy a property – and the odd thing is that the bill arrives about a year AFTER the purchase.

I bought in September last year, the letter is dated this September. So if you buy an akiya, don't be surprised when this lands long after you thought all the paperwork was done! They had my UK address from the purchase registration and posted it straight to England, all in Japanese of course lol

Following my further research on this , the house and land are billed separately, each at 3% of the ASSESSED value (the same low value the annual tax uses, not what you paid). For my akiya it came to ¥38,600 for the building and ¥28,800 for the land – ¥67,400 total, one off payment, never again.

And it connects nicely to your old-vs-new question: I just fact checked it: new houses get a big deduction (up to ¥12 million off the assessed value), so many new builds pay little or no acquisition tax at all. Houses built before 1982 – the old earthquake standard again – get no deduction. But since an old akiya's assessed value is tiny anyway, the bill stays relatively small. Same pattern as the annual tax: no special discount for old houses, but relatively small numbers.

The paying part genuinely impressed me: the slip has a QR code, I scanned it on the official payment site from my laptop in England (laptop camera read the QR codes), paid with my UK AMEX, about ¥500 fee. I imagine 10 years ago this would have been a bank visit in Japan

Funnily enough mine came with a leaflet saying the payment system is down for maintenance for 5 days right before my deadline lol, so I paid it on the spot.

Quite surprised how easy it was.