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Your Gensen Withholding Slip Explained in English | MyKyoten

Here is the part nobody tells you: this document controls more of your life in Japan than almost anything else in your wallet.

Last verified: 2026. This guide is based on Immigration Bureau regulations, Ministry of Health Labour and Welfare guidelines, and standard Japanese administrative practice. It is informational only and does not constitute legal advice. Consult a licensed immigration attorney or official government sources for case-specific guidance.

Your employer hands you a small, dense document every January. It is the 源泉徴収票, the gensen choshuhyo, the withholding slip. It looks like a tax form designed by someone who hates you. Every box is in kanji. There is no English anywhere.

Here is the part nobody tells you: this document controls more of your life in Japan than almost anything else in your wallet. Get a number wrong on your visa renewal application, and immigration will flag it. Misread a deduction field when filing your final tax return, and the National Tax Agency can follow up with a correction notice or, in serious cases, a penalty surcharge. That surcharge starts at 10% of the understated tax amount and can reach 35% if the error is deemed negligent or deliberate.

This guide breaks every field down. You will know exactly what each box means and what to do with it.

What Is This Document and Why Does It Actually Affect You as a Foreigner

The gensen withholding slip is your official annual income summary. Your employer prepares it, files a copy with the tax office, and gives you your copy by mid-January for the prior tax year (January 1 to December 31).

Three situations where this document is non-negotiable:

1. Visa renewal or change of status: Immigration requires proof of stable income. The gensen slip is the gold standard document for this. If your declared income on the renewal form does not match what the slip says, that inconsistency raises a flag.

2. Final tax return (kakuteishinkoku): If you have freelance income, changed jobs mid-year, or your employer did not complete year-end adjustment (nenmatsu chosei), you must file a return by March 15 using figures from this slip.

3. Permanent residency application: The gensen slip is the primary income verification document. Even one year with a missing or inconsistent slip can create problems in a PR review. See the permanent residency guide for what income thresholds actually matter.

Basically, this one small piece of paper is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your immigration and tax life simultaneously.

→ Use the Document Decoder to translate and understand your Japanese administrative documents.

What Does Every Box on the Slip Actually Mean

The slip is divided into sections. Here is a field-by-field translation.

Top section: Payer and recipient information

The four main income and tax figures:

If you want to decode your slip field by field in English without doing this manually, the Gensen Withholding Slip Decoder walks through each box interactively.
Warning Box The 源泉徴収税額 field shows national income tax only. It does not include resident tax (住民税), which is billed separately by your municipality the following year. Foreign residents often assume this box represents all taxes paid. It does not. If you are calculating your total tax burden or preparing a final return, you need both figures. Misreporting only the national tax figure on a kakuteishinkoku can trigger a correction notice from the NTA.

How Do the Deduction Boxes Affect You Specifically as a Foreigner

This is where foreigners run into the most confusion. The deduction boxes on the right side of the slip record personal circumstances that reduce your tax burden. Several of these are directly relevant to your situation.

配偶者控除 or 配偶者特別控除 = Spouse exemption or spouse special deduction. If your spouse lives in Japan and does not earn above the income threshold, your employer should have applied this at year-end adjustment. The catch is, if your spouse lives overseas, the rules changed significantly. Since 2023, non-resident dependents (including overseas spouses) generally cannot be claimed for these deductions unless they meet specific conditions such as being a minor child or elderly parent. If this box is blank and your spouse is abroad, that may be correct. If your employer applied it when it should not have been, you may owe back tax.

社会保険料等の金額 = Social insurance premiums deducted. This includes your contributions to health insurance, employees' pension (kosei nenkin), and employment insurance. For foreigners interested in the pension refund (lump-sum withdrawal) process after leaving Japan, this figure matters significantly. See the pension refund tax guide for how these numbers connect later.

扶養親族の数 = Number of dependents. This is broken into subcategories: general dependents, elderly dependents, and others. If you have dependents living abroad and claimed them, their names and My Numbers (or foreign identification numbers) should appear in the accompanying detail section. Since reforms took effect, overseas dependent claims are heavily scrutinized. A mismatch here is one of the more common audit triggers for foreign residents, based on reports from tax professionals working with foreign nationals.

生命保険料控除 / 地震保険料控除 = Life insurance premium deduction / Earthquake insurance deduction. These appear if your employer processed them through year-end adjustment after you submitted the relevant declaration forms. If you forgot to submit those forms to your HR department by the October or November deadline, these deductions will be blank. You can still claim them yourself by filing a kakuteishinkoku before March 15.

| Field (Japanese) | English Meaning | Who It Affects Most | |---|---|---| | 支払金額 | Gross salary | Everyone, especially visa renewals | | 給与所得控除後の金額 | Income after employment deduction | Tax filers | | 所得控除の額の合計額 | Total personal deductions | Foreigners with dependents | | 源泉徴収税額 | National income tax withheld | Anyone filing a final return | | 社会保険料等の金額 | Social insurance premiums paid | Pension refund applicants | | 配偶者控除額 | Spouse exemption amount | Married foreigners | | 扶養親族の数 | Number of dependents | Foreigners with overseas family |

Three Mistakes Foreigners Make That Actually Cause Problems

Mistake 1: Using gross salary as taxable income.

The 支払金額 is your gross. The figure used to calculate your actual tax liability is the result after subtracting both the employment deduction and all personal deductions. If you submit your gross salary figure where a taxable income figure is required, you will overstate your income for tax purposes, which sounds fine until the NTA matches your filed return against the slip your employer already submitted. The discrepancy triggers a correction notice.

Mistake 2: Missing the spouse special deduction field.

The 配偶者特別控除 box is separate from the main spouse exemption box. It applies when a spouse earns income but below a certain threshold. Foreign residents often assume one of these boxes is relevant and overlook the other. Honestly, if your spouse works part-time and earns between ¥480,001 and ¥1,330,000 annually, the special deduction may apply, but the standard spouse exemption does not. Applying the wrong one, or both, or neither when one was correct, creates a taxable income miscalculation.

Mistake 3: Confusing the tax withheld figure with a refund amount.

The 源泉徴収税額 is not your refund. It is total tax withheld year-to-date. Whether you get a refund or owe more depends on comparing this figure against your actual tax liability after deductions are calculated. This is where people mess up during self-filing. They see a large withholding number and assume it means a large refund. That is only true if your actual tax liability is lower than what was withheld.

Concrete scenario: A German engineer on an Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/International Services visa earned ¥6,200,000 gross in 2025. His gensen slip shows 源泉徴収税額 of ¥312,000. He assumes he is owed most of this back. But after applying the employment deduction and his personal deductions (basic exemption plus social insurance), his actual tax liability calculates to ¥289,000. His actual refund is ¥23,000. Had he reported the full ¥312,000 as a refund claim, the NTA would reject the return and issue a correction.

Reality Check Based on common experience among foreign residents filing their own taxes, the nenmatsu chosei (year-end adjustment) completed by your employer handles most salaried workers' tax obligations automatically. You only need to file a kakuteishinkoku yourself if you changed jobs, had freelance income, had unclaimed deductions, or earn above ¥20,000,000. If your employer completed year-end adjustment, the gensen slip is already the final calculation. But you still need to read it correctly for visa and PR purposes.

How to Cross-Reference Your Slip Against Your December Payslip

This step is not optional if you want to catch employer errors before they become your problem.

1. Pull your December payslip. Locate the cumulative year-to-date columns, not just December's monthly figures. Most Japanese payslips show cumulative totals in a separate row.

2. Compare the 支払金額 on your gensen slip against the cumulative gross salary figure on your December payslip. These should match exactly. If they do not, the difference is usually explained by non-cash benefits or commuting allowances that appear in one document but not the other.

3. Check the 社会保険料等の金額 on your gensen slip against the cumulative social insurance deductions shown on your payslip. These should also match.

4. Verify the 源泉徴収税額 against cumulative income tax deducted on your payslip. If your employer completed year-end adjustment in December, the December payslip may show a large refund or additional deduction to true up the annual tax. The final gensen figure incorporates that adjustment.

5. If the figures do not match by more than a small rounding difference, contact your HR or payroll department immediately. Do not wait until March. Request a corrected gensen slip (再発行) before filing any documents with immigration or the tax office.

What if your employer went out of business before issuing your slip? This happens. You are still legally owed the document. Contact the company's liquidator or, if the company simply closed, the tax office may have a copy filed by the employer. You can also reconstruct the figures using your payslips and request a certificate of withholding from the NTA directly, though this process can take four to six weeks.

What if a field is completely blank? Blank is not always wrong. If no deduction applies, the field legitimately stays empty. But if you submitted a spouse exemption declaration to HR and the 配偶者控除 field is blank, that is an error that needs correction before you use this slip for anything official.

Your next step: Gather your December 2025 payslip and your gensen slip side by side, match the four key figures listed above, and flag any gap above ¥500 for HR follow-up before you touch any visa or tax filing.

What Red Flags Should You Be Looking for as a Foreign Resident?

[Warning Box] Zero in the tax withheld box (源泉徴収税額: 0): If your gross salary exceeded approximately 1,030,000 yen for the year and this box is zero, something is wrong. Either your employer miscalculated your withholding category, or there is a data entry error. A zero here can trigger scrutiny during a visa renewal if the immigration officer compares your declared income against your tax payment history. Gross salary does not match your contract total: If your contract guaranteed 4,800,000 yen annually and the 支払金額 shows 4,200,000 yen with no explanation for the gap, do not assume it is a bonus adjustment. Verify against every payslip. Missing social insurance deduction entry: This sometimes happens when an employee was enrolled in a company health plan for part of the year and national health insurance for another part. The employer only reports what they deducted. The NHI portion belongs in your final tax return, not on this slip.

Take a German engineer on an Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/International Services visa. She earned 5,800,000 yen in 2025 at a mid-size manufacturing firm in Nagoya. Her gensen slip showed a 社会保険料等の金額 of 780,000 yen. When she ran the monthly totals from her payslips, the actual deducted total was 831,000 yen. The difference: 51,000 yen in premiums that her employer had deducted but failed to carry over into the year-end payroll system. Because she checked, she filed a corrected return and received a refund of roughly 9,000 yen in over-withheld income tax.

How Do You Actually Dispute an Error Before the January 31 Deadline?

[Step-by-Step Checklist] 1. Collect all twelve monthly payslips and your employment contract. 2. Run the reconciliation: total gross pay, total social insurance deductions, total income tax withheld. 3. Compare each figure against the four core fields on your gensen slip. 4. Identify the specific field that is incorrect and note the discrepancy in writing. 5. Contact your HR or payroll department in writing (email with read receipt) before January 31. State the specific field, the figure shown, and the figure you believe is correct. Attach payslip copies. 6. If your employer confirms the error, they must issue a corrected slip (再発行) before the deadline. 7. If your employer disputes your figures, escalate to your company's tax accountant or the nearest tax office (税務署) for guidance. 8. If your employer refuses to issue a correction without valid justification, you may file your own confirmed tax return based on documentary evidence and note the discrepancy to the NTA.

January 31 is the statutory employer deadline to issue the slip under the Income Tax Act. After that date, corrections become more complicated. If your employer misses the deadline entirely, they face a penalty under Article 242 of the Income Tax Act. That is their problem legally, but your practical problem is that you may be missing a document needed for a bank loan or visa application.

What if you have already left that employer? Former employers are still legally obligated to issue the slip. Contact them in writing. If they do not respond within a reasonable period, the NTA can advise you on your options, and you may be able to reconstruct your income documentation from payslip records for a self-filed return.

What if your employer has closed down? This is genuinely difficult. You would need to work with your payslips, bank transfer records, and potentially the pension office's records to reconstruct your income. A tax accountant is worth the fee in this situation, typically between 20,000 and 50,000 yen for a reconstruction filing.

Your next step: Gather every monthly payslip from the tax year, open the Gensen Withholding Slip Decoder, and run the four-field comparison before you hand that slip to anyone.

Can I use my gensen slip as proof of income for my visa renewal even if I also had freelance income that year?

The gensen slip only reflects salary income your employer reported. Freelance income must be declared separately via a kakuteishinkoku. For visa renewal, immigration wants to see total income. Submit both the gensen slip and your filed tax return (with the NTA stamp) together. Using only the gensen slip when you had other income sources can be viewed as incomplete disclosure.

My employer did not give me a gensen slip. What are my legal options?

Employers are legally required to issue the slip by January 31 of the following year. If yours has not arrived by early February, request it in writing from HR. If they refuse or cannot produce it, you can report the issue to the tax office (zeimusho), which has authority to follow up with the employer. Keep records of all requests you made.

Does the gensen slip show my resident tax payments?

No. Resident tax (住民税) is administered by your municipality and billed separately, usually starting June of the following year. The gensen slip only shows national income tax withheld. To decode your resident tax notice, use the Resident Tax Notice Decoder.

If you are staring at your gensen slip and still not sure which number goes where, the Payslip Decoder at mykyoten.com can help you match your payslip figures against your withholding slip fields in plain English. It is built specifically for foreign workers in Japan who need to cross-reference Japanese payroll documents without a Japanese-speaking accountant on speed dial.