How to Get your Pension Withdrawal Tax Refund

When you’re a departing JET, odds are you’ll return to your home country. In a previous post, I walked you through how to apply for your lump sum pension withdrawal once you leave Japan. In case you have not read that post, I highly recommended doing so before reading this post. Think of this post as a part two to the referenced post.

When you receive your lump sum pension withdrawal, the Japan Pension Service withholds 20.42% in nonresident taxes. Luckily, you can claim a tax refund for these withheld funds, as long as you follow these steps before, and after, you leave Japan.

Edit History

EDIT: March 2, 2026: I updated the download link to the Japanese tax forms mentioned in this post. You can download the Reiwa 7 (2025) tax forms here. Form 1 and Form 2. Please note the tax return template is based off the Reiwa 6 (2024) tax forms. Despite this, the boxes line up, although corresponding numbers may vary.

What you need

• A designated tax representative. This can be any Japanese resident, ideally someone who lives near the tax office representing your former Japanese residence. Examples include your fellow JETs or your supervisor at work.

• Tax Representative Declaration Form. This can be completed without going to the tax office.

• Lump Sum Pension WIthdrawal Entitlement Statement. This will be sent to you upon payment of funds from the Japan Pension Service (or PMAC).

• Gifts for your tax representative.

• Thank you notes.

• Optional but highly recommended: A pre-prepared Japanese tax return to give to your tax representative (see instructions below).

• Instructions for wiring funds from Japan to your home country.

Before Leaving Japan.

Whereas your lump sum pension withdrawal application is usually completed after leaving Japan, you want to designate a tax representative before you depart. This is because you and your tax representative need to complete the tax representative declaration form and file it with your local tax office.

While many JETs often go to their designated tax office to complete this paperwork, you don’t actually have to go. You can download the form from the National Tax Agency’s website and complete it by yourself. Once you do so, you can give it to your tax representative to complete. Your representative can then go to the tax office on your behalf and certify the form.

Below are instructions for completing the Tax Representative Declaration Form. These instructions are based off TokyoJET’s instructions, albeit updated for the current form (as of 2024).

Useful 日本語 (Translated with DeepL)

Under Section 4 of the Tax Representative Designation Form, write 日本における脱退一時金の請求 (Nihon ni okeru dattaiichijikin no seikyū) = Claiming Lump-sum Withdrawal Payments in Japan

Under Section 5, subsection 2, in the parenthesis, write 脱退金の一時所得 (Dattai-kin no ichiji shotoku) = Lump-sum income from withdrawal

How to find your local tax representative office

The National Tax Agency’s Japanese language website has a tool to help you locate your nearest tax office. All you have to do is enter your postal code and they will tell you where your representative tax office is located.

After you leave Japan

Once you leave Japan, you should complete your lump sum pension withdrawal application. You can find instructions for completing the application from my previous post, or TokyoJET, whichever you prefer.

Lump Sum Entitlement Statement

Assuming no issues with your pension withdrawal application, you will receive an official lump sum pension withdrawal entitlement statement in the mail (shown below), along with your pension book which you sent to the pension service. The entitlement statements are printed in blue ink and tell you, in Japanese yen terms, how much money you were entitled to (The green box labeled “B”), the amount of tax withheld (the purple box labeled “A”), and the amount in yen they paid out to your home country’s (or Japanese) bank account (the brown box labeled “C”).

Note: These colors and labels correspond to my tax return instructions shown below.

Making Your Tax Rep’s Life Easier

Make a copy of the entitlement statement and send the original to your tax representative in Japan. You should also mail your tax representative instructions for wiring money to you, whether it’s SWIFT instructions to your bank account, or even a Wise user tag. In addition, I highly recommend making your tax rep’s life easier by providing instructions on how to complete the tax return, as well as steps to follow. TokyoJET provides copies of annotated tax returns for your rep to follow. However, these are slightly outdated due to recent changes in tax return forms, so I made a revised version below. I’ve also attached a template of instructions for you to modify and send to your tax representative (see bottom of this post). They’re doing you a service, so I implore you; please, make their lives easier.

Both the entitlement statement and tax return instructions are color and letter-coded. All you or your tax representative have to do is plug in the numbers to their corresponding colors and letter labels on the tax return.

Useful 日本語 (Translated with DeepL)

Per TokyoJET, you should write the following, in parenthesis, after your tax representative’s name:

納税管理人 (Nōzei kanrinin) = Tax Agent

Note: The below template is for the Reiwa 6 (2024) tax year. Make sure you use the tax forms corresponding to your departure year.

Tax Representative Duties

Once you mail your lump sum entitlement statement to your tax representative, they will take that document, along with their copy of the tax representative form. From there, they should meet with a tax agent, who will assist them with preparing the return.

Japanese tax returns require that the person submitting the return has a Japanese bank account to receive refunds. Therefore, unless you kept your Japanese bank account open and active, your tax representative will receive your refund. In about three weeks, your representative will receive the 20.42% tax withheld in their bank account. From there, they will follow your remittance instructions and send the money to either your home country’s bank account, or to your Wise, PayPal, Western Union, or whatever account you use for receiving money.

Doing Things The Casey Way

I am a detail-oriented person, perhaps to an obsessive degree. I am also passionate about tax returns, as my former JET colleagues can tell you. When going through the process, I did the following steps to make my tax representative’s life easier.

First, in addition to the lump sum entitlement statement, I printed out clear instructions written in plain English for my representative to follow. She then used these instructions as a checklist to keep organized and follow up with me on when she completed tasks. If I could have done this in Japanese, I would have.

Next, I downloaded copies of the Japanese tax return forms I needed (These are 2025 forms): Form 1 and Form 2 (you can download them by clicking on the above links) and, following instructions found on a shared Google document made by a former JET, plugged in the numbers according to their corresponding places on the forms. I did this using Preview on my mac, though it was a pain in the ass to get the numbers to line up properly. You can also handwrite them too, but I chose to type everything.

The Little Touches

In an effort to prepare the forms properly, I then went to Daiso and purchased some A4 sized printer paper. I then printed out my forms, in color, and included the completed tax return with my document package.

I also sent some gifts to my tax representative as a thank you for her efforts, along with a thank you note.

This ended up saving my tax representative loads of time. All she had to do was write her bank account info in the designated space hand over the documents to the tax agent, and after careful review, they were accepted as is. The refund was deposited to her account in three weeks.

Coincidentally, my tax representative received the funds just before I arrived in Japan to see my former students graduate. Due to this fortunate timing, we decided to meet in person and exchange funds. This ended up saving me $100 USD in transfer fees, as all I had to do was go to a currency exchange place and convert the cash to USD before returning home.

Tax Representative Instruction Template

I prepared a Word document below based on the actual instructions I gave to my representative. Feel free to modify for your convenience. This template is formatted for American JETs. If you’re European or Australasian, you would format based on your bank’s international wire transfer instructions.

Conclusion

You worked hard for your money on JET (well, I hope you did, anyway). This guide should walk you through the steps necessary to ensure you receive your pension withdrawal tax refund.