Invoicing guide
Invoicing in Japan
Consumption Tax — how it works, what an invoice needs, and where the numbers come from.
Data as of 2026-07-19. Sources: www.nta.go.jp (opens in new tab), www.jetro.go.jp (opens in new tab).
This is general guidance, not tax advice — verify with your tax authority.
The tax regime
Japan taxes most sales under a Consumption Tax system (regime type: consumption_tax). The document title Ochre prints is “Invoice.”
Tax registration number
The tax registration number for Japan is labelled Registration Number (T) on an Ochre invoice.
Format: "T", then 13 digits.
Registration & thresholds
NOT a must-register trigger like AE/SA/NZ. ¥10,000,000 is the small-business EXEMPTION floor: a business with base-period (≈2 years prior) taxable sales ≤ ¥10M is exempt from consumption tax. Becoming a Qualified Invoice Issuer is VOLUNTARY at any size — but once registered, the exemption no longer applies and consumption tax must be filed. Buyers need a qualified invoice to claim input credit. (10,000,000 JPY)
Rates
| Standard-rated (10%) | 10% |
|---|---|
| Reduced-rated (8%) | 8% |
| Export-exempt (0%) | 0% |
| Non-taxable (非課税) | 0% |
| Out of scope (不課税) | 0% |
Rates shown above are for Domestic supply; this pack also defines Export for cross-border or special-case supplies.
Price display
Ochre's default for Japan is tax-exclusive pricing on a line item.
For consumer-facing (B2C) prices, the displayed price must include tax.
Rounding
Tax is rounded half up, applied once per tax rate on the invoice, to a precision of 1.
Mandatory invoice fields
- Document title (e.g. “Tax Invoice”)
- Seller's tax registration number
- Issue date
- Tax category code on each line
- Tax broken down by rate
Fiscal year & dates
The fiscal year starts April 1. Dates print in YYYY/MM/DD order.
Currency
JPY (¥), shown to 0 decimal places.
E-invoicing
VOLUNTARY. Japan runs JP PINT (Peppol BIS Billing localized for Japan), administered by the Digital Agency as the Peppol Authority. It is a format/transmission choice that helps meet the Qualified Invoice System's CONTENT rules — not a legal mandate, and there is no deadline for invoicing government buyers. A fully offline, locally-generated PDF qualified invoice is legally complete with no server dependency. Ochre does not submit invoices through JP PINT.