The "¥1.03M wall" is outdated — Japan's 2025 reform moved the spouse-deduction walls to ¥1.23M / ¥1.60M / ¥2.01M

Ask anyone in Japan about a working spouse and you'll hear "keep it under ¥1.03 million." That advice is now out of date. Japan's 2025 (Reiwa 7) reform raised the basic and employment-income deductions, and the spouse-deduction lines moved up with them. Mio doesn't repeat old numbers — here are the current ones, read from the Japanese-language NTA sources, in plain English.

What changed in 2025

The reform is recent, so application details (including how/when it flows into resident tax) should be confirmed with the NTA before you file.

The three "walls," decoded

• ¥1.23M (old ¥1.03M): spouse's salary at or below this = the spouse deduction, full ¥380,000 (earner income ≤¥9M).
• ¥1.60M (old ¥1.50M): above ¥1.23M it switches to the special spouse deduction, but the amount stays full at ¥380,000 until ¥1.60M. So ¥1.23M–¥1.60M is "still full."
• ¥2.01M: above this the special spouse deduction is zero — the point the spouse fully leaves the "tax dependent" zone.

Note the ¥1.06M / ¥1.30M numbers you may also have heard are a different system — whether the spouse must start paying their own social insurance — not the tax deduction. To talk about real household take-home you have to look at both.

The overlooked cap: the earner's own income

The deduction isn't only about the spouse. It shrinks and vanishes as the earner (the one claiming the deduction) earns more:

So if the earner's total income tops ¥10M, there's no spouse deduction at all, whatever the spouse earns. (Total income ¥9M is roughly ¥10.95M of salary, after the employment-income deduction — check which band your salary lands in.)

Why "the deduction shrinks, so work less" is usually wrong

While the deduction is full, the spouse working more simply raises household take-home. Even in the ¥1.60M–¥2.01M taper, the deduction drops by only a few tens of thousands of yen in tax, while the extra earnings are far larger — so a shrinking deduction is not a loss. The place household take-home actually dents is the social-insurance wall (¥1.06M / ¥1.30M), where the spouse starts paying premiums. If you're going to optimize around one wall, make it the social-insurance one — not the tax deduction.

Mio's read

First, drop the ¥1.03M number: for 2025 the spouse deduction runs to ¥1.23M, and full deduction holds to ¥1.60M, fading to zero at ¥2.01M. Second, remember it's also capped by the earner's income (gone above ¥10M). Third, don't cut hours to protect a tax deduction that only tapers gently — the real take-home step is the social-insurance wall. Because the reform is fresh, verify the current figures with the NTA before you file.

Next: The ¥1.06M / ¥1.30M social-insurance wall, calculated → · The income "walls" overview →