Furusato Nozei Swag 2017

Oh yeeeeah.


So I mentioned furusato nozei last year. My ‘gift’ (bribe?) arrived last week.

Take a look at the previous post for the details, but basically furusato nozei is a system where you can send your local inhabitant taxes (住民税) to a different locality in exchange for some kind of gift.

This year I send 50,000 yen to Osato in Miyagi (mainly because I am thinking of buying property there in the future) and they sent me a box of prime beef steaks.

The whole thing will hopefully only cost me 2,000 yen, as I claim the 50,000 yen back from the local inhabitant taxes I owe to Sendai, minus the 2,000 yen fee.

There are a huge number of gifts available, from the ordinary to the truly ridiculous.

Anyone else using furusato nozei this year? What did you get?

15 Responses

  2. I am a huge fan and relatively heavy user of this particular loophole.
    While it is undoubtedly correct that any “donation” you make up to your allowance will only cost you 2,000 yen at the end of the day, it is not 100% clear to me how and when the bulk of your donation comes back to you.
    Some of it comes back by way of an income tax rebate at kakutei shinkoku time, but the rest seems to come back through a reduction in your residents tax (http://www.soumu.go.jp/main_sosiki/jichi_zeisei/czaisei/czaisei_seido/furusato/mechanism/deduction.html).
    So, while your steaks, sake, etc will only cost you 2,000 yen in the final reckoning, only a portion of your donation is returned to you as cash, while the rest is deducted from your residents tax across (presumably) the following 12 month period, meaning there are real cash flow considerations for anyone thinking of donating a large amount of money.
    For example, if I donated 10,000 today, a portion of the 8,000 yen to be returned to me would come back as an income tax deduction when I do my tax return in February 2018, and the rest would take the form of a reduction in my residents tax paid in tax year 2018 (or even 2019?)
    Unless I’m mistaken…

    1. Thanks! This is my first time playing the game, so I have no idea how things work.
      Guess I’ll find out over the next twelve months 🙂

  4. I just got into furusato nozei at the end of December last year, and in January had received most of the food gifts I donated for already – 30 kgs of rice, some chicken and beef supplies.
    Only my new TV is still to arrive (some time this month I expect).
    In terms of cash flow I think it’s certainly better to do furusato nozei at the end of the year, but the other consideration is you can only fit so much frozen meat in your house at a time, so there is some sense to donating gradually throughout the year as well.
    For big donations (for TVs and the like), holding on to your cash until the end of the year makes more sense. But then if you do actually want what the big donation will give you (like a TV), you probably don’t want to wait in the first place. (Unless you are planing to on-sell your furusato nozei gifts)
    Also for electronics gifts, I gather that there has been some pressure from the central bureaucracy directed at the furusato nozei websites to discourage the promotion of those furusatos. The Furusato Choice site I think no longer handles any home electronic gift furusatos, so I had to search for a different site to hook me up with the new TV that I wanted. It might be a matter of time before it gets even harder to get these types of gifts at all.
    I think what Tony C writes above about the timing of the tax deductions is correct. In my case I’m doing kakutei shinkoku this month so the income tax part will be accounted for then (3~4 months after my donations) and I understand my monthly local tax will be reduced accordingly when that is next revised later this year. So my understanding is that overall you pay the same amount of tax, you are just paying it early when you donate to furusatos (and getting goodies in return that you can use to otherwise reduce your usual expenditures on food etc).

    1. I didn’t realize there were other websites you could use for searching for gifts. If you wouldn’t mind could you share the one you use to search for electronic goods? Cheers!

    2. How big is the TV you donated for? And how much do you earn in a year?
      I guess getting a 32inch TV for a 100,000yen donation would work out alright for me … but I already have a TV bigger than that, and if I went for the 49inch TV, I would be deep in the red.
      As I said before though, I’ve yet to actually get around to going through with it (haven’t really seen the need yet), but I did calculate my softcap to be around 80,000yen.

      1. I went for a 32-inch – I have been thinking to get a second one and then the furusato nozei scheme came on my radar.
        My soft cap was around 200,000 I believe, but I only did 150,000 last year to be sure I stayed under. Tv for 100,000 and then various food. This year I’ll be trying to work it to the limit! But not sure if there will be other bigger ticket items to donate for, will have to check my shopping list.
        I’d like to understand how other tax deductions like mortgage deduction and medical expenses effect the cap. I had both last year so that may have boosted my cap…?

  5. We’ve been doing it for a while. This time, we got two dozen tubs of ice cream from Hokkaido, lots of meat from Kyushu, and will get a couple of boxes of vegetables delivered in summer from Hokkaido. Last year, I think we got a couple of bottles of wine, a big cutting board for the new house, vegetables, meat, and ice cream. I kind of like the idea.