It’s that time of year already! (Taxes!)

While I am not usually a do-it-yourself type of person, taxes is the exception. It was something that was instilled onto me by my parents back in Canada. Paper and pencil, form after form. It was a strange family activity that my sister and I had gone through since high school.

Now that I have moved to Japan, I started this family activity with my partner. Every year, we would sit down in front of the computer, pull up the e-Tax page and do our taxes together. My company usually does it for me but I do a few section myself because of furusato nozei (unless you did the paperwork for the one-stop system) and if I was had gotten any sort of official salary from a side hustle. I’m yes for both this year.

For those new to Japan or if you are doing your taxes yourself for the first time, I hope you can find this helpful.

We have always done our through e-Tax. If you have a My Number card with the IC chip and a card reader, you can do everything from home. I am still a proud holder of the original flimsy piece of paper version, so I print my out and drop it off on my way to work.

You don’t have to log in or anything. Just choose to start a new file and go for it. 　You can find the section where you are suppose to punch in your numbers from then 源泉徴収票 you get from your work place. They write out all the numbers and circle all the boxes according to your paper for you, so it’s not that hard.

For furusato nozei, please look below:

This came out smaller than I thought it would.

Click on 寄附金控除 and it will direct you to the page where you can input your furusato nozei donations. The address of the city government office will be automatically written after selecting the city or prefecture you donated to so that’s one less thing to worry about.

The site will confirm how much money you will be getting back. Even with the house loan, we are getting less back this year. Oh well!

After that, you save it as a pdf file, print it out and mail it off/drop it off/send it off (for those with the IC chip card reader)

I dropped mine off earlier today. Remember, the soon you drop it off, the faster you get your money.

Good luck with your taxes!