Japan lodging tax calculator — the charge that is not in your booking price

Rates last checked against each authority's own page on —. The calculation runs in your browser; nothing you type leaves the page.

Why this is not in the price you were quoted

Japanese lodging tax is a local tax — set by the municipality, the prefecture, or both — and collected by the accommodation on the local government's behalf. Booking platforms generally show the room rate and the 10% consumption tax, and leave the lodging tax to be settled at the property — which is why a great many travelers first hear about it at check-in, in cash, at the end of a long flight.

For two people on a three-night stay in Kyoto at ¥18,000 a night, it is ¥2,400. Not ruinous; also not zero, and entirely predictable.

The base is the room-only rate, per person, per night

Every jurisdiction checked here taxes the same thing: the price of the room per person per night with meals and consumption tax stripped out, and service charge left in. In Japanese this is sudomari ryōkin — the "just sleeping" rate.

That is not the number on your booking confirmation if breakfast is included. A ¥22,000 half-board rate might be ¥18,000 of room and ¥4,000 of food, and the ¥4,000 is not taxed. In several places the difference straddles a band boundary and changes the tax, which is why the calculator asks for the room-only figure rather than the total.

2026 is the year this became hard to keep track of

At the end of 2025, seventeen local governments levied a lodging tax — three prefectures and fourteen municipalities. On 1 October 2026 the Ministry of Internal Affairs counted 49 in force (seven prefectures and forty-two municipalities), and eighteen more had consent but had not started yet, which takes the total to 67. Several of the long-standing ones changed their rates in the same window.

Kyoto's ¥10,000 top band is the highest fixed amount in Japan — only an uncapped percentage, such as Kutchan's 3%, charges more, and only on very expensive stays. It applies to stays of ¥100,000 or more per person per night, so most visitors will never meet it. Kyoto divides the room charge by the number of guests, so a couple sharing a ¥240,000 suite — ¥120,000 each — now pay ¥20,000 a night in lodging tax, against ¥2,000 before the change. The same couple in a ¥120,000 suite (¥60,000 each) pay ¥8,000.

Fixed bands or a percentage — and why Tokyo switched

Two designs are in use. Most places charge a fixed amount per band: Kanazawa charges ¥200 below ¥20,000 and ¥500 above it. Kutchan charges a straight percentage of the rate.

Tokyo gives its reason for moving to 3% as fairness and neutrality: the charge should follow the room rate. The arithmetic shows what that means. Under fixed amounts, as room rates rose, expensive stays paid a steadily smaller proportion — ¥200 on a ¥15,000 room is 1.3%, ¥200 on a ¥150,000 room is 0.13%. A percentage keeps the burden proportional to the rate.

Thresholds are where the surprises live

A tax-free threshold means stays below a certain nightly rate are not taxed at all — and the threshold varies more than the rates do.

• Kyoto has none. A ¥3,000 hostel bed is taxed ¥200. The city's stated basis is to ask every guest for a small share in return for the city services they use — "broadly and thinly" — while banding the amount by what the room costs.
• Kanazawa had none either until it introduced a ¥5,000 threshold in October 2024.
• Osaka lowered its threshold from ¥7,000 to ¥5,000 in September 2025, which means a mid-range stay that used to be untaxed is now taxed.
• Tokyo exempts stays under ¥10,000 until 31 March 2027. From 1 April 2027 it exempts stays under ¥13,000, and a stay of ¥13,000 or more pays 3% of the whole room-only rate.

So "budget accommodation is exempt" is true in Tokyo, false in Kyoto, and was false in Kanazawa until recently.

Two taxes, one line on the bill

Several places charge a prefectural tax and a municipal tax at the same time, collected together so that you see a single figure.

• Fukuoka City — the ¥200 below ¥20,000 is ¥150 city and ¥50 prefecture. Kitakyushu's flat ¥200 splits the same way.
• Hokkaido — the prefecture introduced its own tax on 1 April 2026 (¥100 / ¥200 / ¥500 by band), and in most towns it stacks on top of the municipal tax. In Hakodate a ¥120,000 night is ¥2,000 city plus ¥500 prefecture, so ¥2,500. The exceptions fold it into a single 3%: Kutchan, Niseko from November 2026, and in 2027 Tomakomai and Kitahiroshima.
• Kutchan — the 3% includes the prefectural share. The town raised its own rate specifically so that guests would still see one clean percentage after the prefecture arrived.

You never have to work this out yourself. It does explain why two neighboring towns in the same prefecture quote very different-looking numbers for what is substantially the same tax — and why a Hokkaido stay costs more per night from April 2026 than the town's own published rate suggests.

Stays that cross a rate change

Lodging tax is charged per night, so a stay that begins before a change and ends after it is taxed under both rules. A Kyoto stay from 28 February to 2 March 2026 is two nights: the night of 28 February at the old rate and the night of 1 March at the new one (2026 is not a leap year). The calculator walks your nights one at a time, so a stay that straddles a change — or starts before a tax exists — is charged night by night, and the result shows each part.

Exemptions exist, and you probably cannot claim them

Most ordinances exempt school excursions, and some exempt diplomatic stays or, temporarily, people displaced by a disaster. These are claimed through the accommodation with documentation from the school or authority, not by the traveler at the desk.

What this calculator does not cover

It covers the jurisdictions whose own ordinance or tax page we have read. With municipalities being added every few months, a place missing from the list is not a place without a tax — check the city's own site, or the accommodation's booking terms, before assuming.

Two prefectures are handled as single entries because that is how the money works. Okinawa charges 2% whether or not your municipality also taxes: the prefecture takes 0.8% and the municipality 1.2%. Miyagi charges ¥300 everywhere; inside Sendai it is ¥100 prefectural plus ¥200 city tax. Hokkaido and Nagano stack, so their municipalities appear individually with the combined figure, and a plain "somewhere in Hokkaido" entry covers the towns that levy nothing of their own.

Where a rule has changed and we have not been able to confirm the new one, or a tax has been approved without a published start day, the calculator says so instead of showing ¥0 or carrying old figures forward — a wrong number that looks like an answer is worse than no answer. One entry is in that state today: Oita Prefecture. Its tax was consented to on 30 September 2026, but the only start the government has published is "January 2027 or later", so the calculator treats stays before 1 January 2027 as untaxed and gives no figure from that date.

Separately, onsen towns levy a bathing tax (nyūtōzei) on top of everything else. The Local Tax Act sets ¥150 per person per day as the standard, but towns vary it: Kushiro charges ¥300 at registered hotels and ryokan, and Beppu from ¥50 up to ¥500 depending on what the stay costs. It is a different tax with a different legal basis and is not calculated here.

Related tools

• Japan tax-free refund calculator — the consumption tax you can get back, and the 1 November 2026 change to how.
• How we verify — which sources this page was built from and when they were last read.