Information on corporation income tax
Corporation income tax is a major part of your business as all corporations can’t ignore it. Check some of the rules here.
Small and medium-sized enterprises
Corporation income tax?
Setting up a corporation and taxes
You can set up a corporation at the Legal Affairs Bureau (law firms can help you.). Then you have articles of incorporation, a corporate seal, a corporate bank account, etc. After that, you have to think about corporation taxes. Corporation taxes would include corporation income tax, withholding tax, depreciable assets tax, property acquisition tax, and even a penalty, depending on how your corporation is doing its business. And corporation income tax is probably the most important one that you have to know since its impact is relatively big.
Tax documents
If you set up a corporation on January 1st, it is usually recommended that you think about several tax documents and submit some by January 31st because of the due date. Some documents are required under the rule and some are optional. Optional documents are relating to depreciation methods (how depreciable assets are depreciated), inventory valuation (how inventories are valued), due dates for paying withholding taxes and filing a corporation income tax return, etc. Also, blue return has a significant impact on your tax. Don’t forget it.
Accounting & tax period
You can determine your corporation’s fiscal year (when set up a corporation). It is not necessarily a calendar year (January 1t to December 31st). And a fiscal year is a tax year.
Tax computation
Below is how corporation income tax is calculated (very rough formula).
(Revenues under tax rule – Expenses under tax rule) × tax rate = Corporation income tax
What happens when the expenses exceed the revenues? You still need a tax return as all corporations are required to do. And you have no corporation income tax but inhabitant tax is needed.
Many things to be considered
To calculate the tax, there are so many things that can affect revenues and expenses under tax rule and the tax.
Examples: Executive compensation, entertainment expenses, donation, bad debt, conversion of foreign currency, securities, inventories, depreciation, carried-forward net loss, specific family corporation rule, thin capitalization, earnings stripping rule.
We don’t say you should understand all of these as we help you do your taxes. But some people are just interested to know the basic ideas of doing taxes in Japan even if we do everything for you. Thus this website is constantly updated with new Japan tax information.
If interested in our tax return preparation service, click here.