Revisions to the inheritance tax went into effect in 2015, and related statistics for that year were recently made public by the National Tax Agency.
The main change had to do with the basic deduction. Before 2015 the deduction equaled ¥50 million plus ¥10 million for each heir. That formulation has now changed to ¥30 million plus ¥6 million for each heir. This means, for example, that the estate of a person with three heirs is subject to inheritance tax if it is greater than ¥48 million, whereas before 2015 it was exempt until it reached ¥80 million. Consequently, the estates of a wider group of people now have to pay inheritance taxes when those people die, so what used to be a tax that affected mainly rich people is now a concern for more of the middle class.
As a result, the portion of deceased who were taxed rose from 4.4 percent in 2014 to 8 percent in 2015, an increase of 80 percent. According to an article in the Tokyo Shimbun on Jan. 26, this is a bigger increase than the National Tax Agency expected. As predicted, the greatest increase was in Tokyo, where the portion of deceased people subject to taxation rose from 7.5 percent to 12.7 percent. Nagoya's figure rose from 6.1 percent to 11 percent.
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