JJapan Finance

2025 Mid-year Furusato Nozei Question Thread

  • September 12, 2025

There is still plenty of time to finish using up your Furusato Nozei (ふるさと納税) allowance and we may still do the usual year-end Furusato Nozei Question Thread, but this year we are posting one now due to the rule change that will take effect from October 1, 2025.

Due to the upcoming change, we expect there may be questions about Furusato Nozei allowances, the one-stop system, how to figure out what your limits are, or Furusato Nozei in general around this time, so we have decided to open up a questions thread dedicated to the topic.

Check out the wiki page on Furusato Nozei, also.

What is Furusato Nozei?

Furusato Nozei, or the home-town tax program, offers tax-paying residents an opportunity to donate a portion of their tax to the "hometown" of their choice, generally in exchange for a gift worth up to 30% of the donation amount.

What's new in 2025?

What is the cost?

The cost to use the furusato-nozei programme is ¥2000; the rest of the donations will return on your income and/or residence tax returns, assuming you do not exceed your limits.

What are the limits?

  • Estimate your own taxable income.
  • If you do one-stop or your taxable income is less than 1.95 million yen, any of the regular FN donation limit calculation sites — such as this one or the more advanced, but accurate one — should be fine. Otherwise, use this tool to calculate your FN donation limit accurately.
  • For a very nice post about FN limits and their interaction with how much you can donate and get back, check out our Guide to Furusato Nozei Donation Limits.
  • If you have a residential mortgage tax credit and don’t do one-stop, avoid the regular calculation sites unless your taxable income is at least 10x larger than your tax credit (e.g., if you are eligible for a 200,000 yen credit, your taxable income should be at least 2,000,000 yen).

Please note also that there is an annual exemption to "temporary income" of ¥500,000, and that Furusato Nozei gifts count as "temporary income". This means, using the 30% maximum for the value of gifts to donations, if you donate more than ¥1,666,667, or you have other "temporary income" (lottery wins, insurance payouts, etc), you will be taxed on that income.

So, what if I do exceed my limits?

You are essentially gifting money to the municipality as charity (although you will get whatever gift they send you) and will not receive back the amount donated in excess of your limit, increasing your out-of-pocket cost to participate beyond 2000 yen.

Do I have residence tax this year?

Residence tax for year n is determined by (a) your income in year n (b) on your residency on Jan 1 in year n + 1. If you are leaving before Dec 31st, your residence tax for 2025 will be zero, because you are not a resident on Jan 1st 2026, and you should not use Furusato Nozei in 2025.

What is One-Stop?

If you gift 5 or fewer municipalities, and you are not required to file a tax return (because the basic YETA covers you / you do not have special circumstances), you can elect to do the "one-stop" system, which allows you to avoid having to file a tax return.

You will need to either:

  • Ask for one-stop at the time you make your donation(s)
  • Mail the one-stop application to the municipality before January 10th of the following year for each donation

Or

  • Use the portal site's / individual munipality's site to electronically submit the one-stop application (example).

If you do not use one-stop, you must save the receipts that are sent to you for tax filing time, or file using e-tax where they are not required.

What are some sites I can use?

There are myriad sites which offer easy furusato nozei options; the most popular are:

How do I file my tax return next year with Furusato Nozei?

Previous year's threads

by AutoModerator

3 comments

  2. > This means, using the 30% maximum for the value of gifts to donations, if you donate more than ¥1,666,667, or you have other “temporary income” (lottery wins, insurance payouts, etc), you will be taxed on that income.

    One thing to note is that you need to consider when you [received the gifts](https://www.nta.go.jp/law/shitsugi/shotoku/03/08.htm) (and/or received and exchanged certain points [1]), not when you made donations. Sometimes gifts take very long to arrive. If you for instance ended up donating 1M yen at the end of 2024, and received the gifts in 2025, and *don’t* repeat the pattern of donating late on the year (i.e., instead, donate where you will surely get the gifts in 2025), you will more easily cross the mentioned threshold this year.

    —-

    [1] The point situation is interesting and the devil is in the details of [how the points were collected](https://www.nta.go.jp/taxes/shiraberu/taxanswer/shotoku/1907.htm). Typical customer loyalty/reward point collection and usage at say your drug store or BicCamera wouldn’t be taxed. But if the points were given as part of a lottery or temporary (in particular lottery like) campaign, taxation applies when the points are used.

    Many FN sites do point handouts as part of certain types of temporary “campaigns”, so the points received through such campaigns could potentially be subject to temporary income treatment by that virtue already, though perhaps dependent on the exact nature of the campaign.

    That aside, the *overall* situation with points taxation is still not exactly fully clear to me.

    This [article](https://s-shibu.com/point/#index_id0) and investigates and argues that points tied to some fixed rate of return for payment as well as their usage generally fall under the concept of discounts, which should be tax free (also in reference to the NTA guide I linked above).

    The [research paper](https://www.nta.go.jp/about/organization/ntc/kenkyu/ronsou/78/04/index.htm) they cite seems to disagree with the statement of the later released NTA guide, in that it more broadly claims points would have to be taxed.

    Personally, since the NTA guide talks about discounts, I believe that the test for whether the “discount” interpretation applies is relevant. So, going back to FN points and ignoring that campaign based handouts already make them very likely taxable, there are other arguments.

    For instance, furunavi.jp gives you points (“furunavi coins”) but only hands them out later as some delayed reward. And then you can exchange them for an Amazon gift card for instance or into other points (e.g. PayPay). To me it it’s *slightly* different from a clear discount system but then again that’s all not necessarily unique to furunavi.jp and FN points (airline miles come to mind).

    But the main argument against the discount interpretation applying to FN to me is that with FN you aren’t really buying anything but *donating* to municipalities, technically the notion of a discount (on a donation) to me doesn’t seem to apply here and overall shifts FN points more into the economic benefits / profits category.

    From the NTA guide:
    > **商品購入に対する通常の商取引**における値引きを受けたことによる経済的利益については、原則として課税対象となる経済的利益には該当しないものとして取り扱っています。

    But FN doesn’t really fall under purchases and also not really under regular transactions.

    Also, even when taking an “it’s shopping” perspective with FN, keep in mind that you are already *overpaying on purpose* for goods so you can offset your residence taxes. Bringing an argument against taxes based on “discounts” into this would appear somewhat absurd.

    In my opinion, *any* subsequent returned benefit (received from the municipality or the site operator) ought to be treated as a return-gift from a legal entity (and taxed as temporary income). The points are essentially part of the promised offering / listing that’s soliciting the donation.

    This is just a quick investigation and probably someone else will fill in and correct me on the points taxation 😅

  3. Thanks for the thread! Is Amazon looking like the best option? I could get 18% (don’t have their credit card so that’s the max I could get).
    Rakuten always claims a lot but my SPU is only 4x (no mobile or securities) so it doesn’t seem to be much better, 17x for me even with 0/5, and 買い回り.

    Curious what everyone’s thoughts are…I know I’m a bit late but was thinking there might be some last minute promotions to take advantage of.

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