RetireJapan

kizuki wrote: ↑Mon Apr 25, 2022 10:39 am Maybe because my name appears first in list of registration. Or could be because I am the household head.

Either is a possibility.

Property-tax bills are sent by the municipality to a designated "representative" (koteishisanzei kyōyū daihyōsha 固定資産税共有代表者 ), who is responsible for making the entire payment and, if joint ownership is involved, ensuring that proper reimbursement is received. If one of the property owners has registered with the municipality as the representative, the bill will be sent there. Otherwise, each municipality is free to decide an order of precedence for designating a property-tax representative. Some choose to send the bill to the person with the highest proportion of ownership; others choose to send it to the person whose name is listed first on the register or to the owner with a local domicile. Multiple names may or may not appear on the bill (corporate ownership is also possible, of course). These days, the order of precedence followed by the municipality can often be found online. Only the representative gets the bill, but a few municipalities (Toyama City, for instance) may send confirmation notices to the other owners as well.

The owners always bear collective responsibility for paying the tax, however, so if the designated representative fails to pay, the other owners will eventually be dunned, probably with an added penalty. This principle of collective responsibility can lead to complications when there are multiple owners or when divorce or inheritance is involved (life events do not eliminate joint responsibility for paying property taxes).

bryanc wrote: ↑Mon Apr 25, 2022 11:32 pm i presume this is just　subtracted at source from salary...

I registered my bank account when I first bought our place, and they just take the property taxes from there each year (I get a notification slip a few weeks in advance).

RetireJapan wrote: ↑Tue Apr 26, 2022 6:32 am

bryanc wrote: ↑Mon Apr 25, 2022 11:32 pm i presume this is just　subtracted at source from salary...

I registered my bank account when I first bought our place, and they just take the property taxes from there each year (I get a notification slip a few weeks in advance).

This is the way to go. Tho the services are in my wife's name, one of my banks is registered/dinged for water/gas/power, too.

(property tax was ¥51,200 this year)

Tkydon wrote: ↑Mon Apr 25, 2022 7:29 am The bill has to be paid, and how you settle between joint owners is up to you, the joint owners.

Agreed. Anyone can pay if you have the details.
I paid for my in-laws this year using a USD credit card online. Lots of points and needed to make a spending goal for a bonus. Not to mention the 127 rates.

TJKansai wrote: ↑Wed Apr 27, 2022 4:09 am
I paid for my in-laws this year using a USD credit card online. Lots of points and needed to make a spending goal for a bonus. Not to mention the 127 rates.

Hang on...we can pay for property taxes with credit cards?
Does it depend on the city? If not, I am missing a trick here...

beanhead wrote: ↑Wed Apr 27, 2022 2:51 pm Hang on...we can pay for property taxes with credit cards?

It depends on the municipality, so you have to check, but many have systems in place since credit-card payments have been allowed since 2017. A modest fee is charged: generally around 80 yen per 10,000 yen of tax. In Tokyo's wards, for instance, it would cost 401 yen to pay property tax of 45,000 yen, assuming that this is the entire tax and it is paid all at once. The service is only available online, and you can't use a credit card to pay the tax in person or at convenience stores. You also can't arrange for automatic payment, as you can with free bank transfers.

If you have a prepaid electronic-money card like nanaco or certain WAON cards, you can use the e-money card to avoid the service fee altogether and still get points for charging the card. Prepaid cards do tend to have relatively low upper limits, though.

Nanaco has a max charge of 50,000 on the card and won't accept more unless you do some weird trick where you store 50k on 7-11's servers then load up the card again then use it. This will only get you upto max 100k though.

I pay my anticipated taxes (kakuteishinkoku) via credit cards (Japanese or US) as well. The value of the points I earn is a good bit more than the modest fee.

We couldn't do it for my wife's capital gains filing though.