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The story
According to the National Tax Agency’s survey on private-sector salary conditions for fiscal 2025, 3.395 million people earn more than ¥10 million a year — 6.6% of all salaried workers. The gender gap is striking too: 2.999 million men compared to just 398,000 women. On 5ch’s Newsplus (Breaking News+) board, reactions ranged from comments on the cost of city living — “In Tokyo, 1 in 3 people clear that mark,” “Feels about the same as a ¥6 million salary 30 years ago” — to debates over whether income or assets are the better measure, and complaints that even clearing ¥10 million doesn’t actually buy a comfortable life.
(Omitted)
● [Number of People and Income Tax by Salary Bracket]
In the National Tax Agency’s fiscal 2025 survey on private-sector salary conditions, breaking down the 51.631 million salaried workers employed throughout the year by salary bracket, 3.395 million people earned more than ¥10 million a year. That’s 6.6% of the total.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
¥10 million a year these days is basically like ¥6 million 30 years ago.
Ah, true that. I'm in Tokyo too, so it's really not that big a deal.
Isn't that just because taxes and insurance premiums have gone up compared to 30 years ago?
¥10 million in Tokyo and ¥6 million in Nagoya buy you about the same standard of living.
The tax rate on investment income is 20%.
The property tax rate is 1.7%.
Assets matter more than income.
The progressive tax system is clearly broken, don't you think? Given the cost of social security, it should really work like this: lower income tax rates as income rises, not the other way around. For example, on a ¥10 million income:
– 50% on the portion up to ¥3 million,
– 40% on the portion from ¥3-6 million,
– 30% on the portion from ¥6-9 million,
– 10% on the portion from ¥9-10 million.
Something along those lines.
You don't even know the difference between revenue and taxable income?
Depends on whether you've got a wife and kids. If you're a 'single aristocrat' (Japanese slang for singles living it up with no dependents) or a DINK couple, you're living easy. Wife plus one kid, it's decent. Two kids, you're cutting it close.
Right, take that ¥30 million, dump it into the investments the government's been pushing, go for FIRE! …and still end up needing welfare. It's all about the outcome, isn't it.
Try a little harder.
A one-man contractor's ¥10 million isn't the same as a salaried employee's ¥10 million.
People have been saying that since the old 2ch days when I was young, so there's something moving about realizing I actually made it to 'that side' — but my take-home pay really hasn't gone up. It's not going down either, I guess.
Nope — the self-proclaimed story is ¥15 million a year, a licensed professional who graduated from Tokyo Tech, wife earning ¥9 million, ¥70 million in savings, and two kids in private school.
Funny how nobody ever self-proclaims being good-looking too, lol.
That's true for gross revenue, but when people talk about a sole proprietor's 'annual income,' they usually mean total taxable income, not gross revenue — so it shouldn't diverge that much. Not having an employer's share of social insurance premiums lowers taxable income a bit, and there's no future retirement payout, but that's not a difference of several million yen.
What are you even basing that generalization about sole proprietors on?
That's just you calling your own passive income a 'side job.' That's not standard usage. If it's passive, you could argue you're not actually 'doing' any business at all. From a tax standpoint, what you call it depends on what kind of income it actually is.
Not necessarily. Depends on the person.
Prices have gone up about 30% over the last 10 years, yet only 6% of the population clears ¥10 million. By rights, wages should have risen 30% too — something's off.
As long as you're earning through labor, you can't become rich — labor is bound by time, and you can't work more than 24 hours a day.
The people who get rich around the world aren't the ones earning through labor. What separates people in life is whether they build a 'system' that brings in money outside of labor. Some people have caught onto that rule; others haven't.
You mean like being paid hourly?
That's not what I meant. Not just in Japan — people who get rich worldwide don't make a living by selling off their own time piece by piece. They might earn their first seed money through labor, but at some point they switch to letting money work for them (investing), or hiring other people to work and taking the company's profits (executive pay, stock dividends, etc.) — building a system that brings in money without spending their own time. They set it up so the cash just keeps rolling in, even while relaxing at a resort or sound asleep.
Forbes puts out its world billionaires ranking every year, and not a single salaried employee makes the top of that list. Almost all of them are capitalists who built systems that earn money while they sleep.
Look at dentists, for example — even though they're high earners, they're making every yen with their own two hands, so it's rough. If something ever stops them from working, they're in trouble immediately. Passive income is a blessing. My current income is 100% passive.
Sounds like you fell for one of those get-rich-quick pitches that love quoting 'Rich Dad Poor Dad' or 'Who Moved My Cheese?'
In central Tokyo, yeah. Just being a regular salaried employee, nobody takes you seriously. Past that income level, people start aiming to incorporate themselves, so below that you basically get treated like a kid — that's what I mean.
Normally it'd be more like a dual-income couple — husband at ¥10 million, wife at ¥7 million.
Background and Key Points of Debate
This statistic comes from the National Tax Agency’s annual survey on private-sector salary conditions, covering 51.631 million salaried workers employed throughout the year. It doesn’t include self-employed income or side income that’s only captured through separate tax filings, so — as one commenter noted with ‘even a one-man contractor can easily clear ¥10 million’ — the meaning of ‘annual income’ for salaried workers versus everyone else can’t be compared directly. Where the thread split was over whether ¥10 million should count as ‘high income’ or as merely ‘average once you factor in prices and regional differences,’ with commenters pointing out that ¥10 million in Tokyo buys a similar standard of living to ¥6 million in the countryside, and debating whether assets (a stock measure) matter more than income (a flow measure). On the other hand, factors behind the gender gap (2.999 million men vs. 398,000 women) — such as differences in years of service or the share of management positions — weren’t explored in much depth in the thread, so it’s worth being cautious about letting the raw numbers speak for themselves without that context.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Newsplus) thread “[Latest] 3.395 Million People Earn Over ¥10 Million a Year, 6.6% of the Total — 2.999 Million Men, 398,000 Women.”
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