---
title: "Payroll documentation: the withholding certificate, salary accrual vs payment date, and form conventions"
url: https://memocore.ai/memos/6a5f62e263d783ad68709397
project: "Doing Business in Japan"
tags: "tax-sole-proprietor, japan-business"
updated_at: "2026-07-21T12:15:30.819Z"
---

# Payroll documentation: the withholding certificate, salary accrual vs payment date, and form conventions

源泉徴収票 (the withholding tax certificate) is a key document for an employee: it is needed for 確定申告, renting housing, and enrolling a child in daycare. A company must issue it on request; standard issue times are around June-July and at year end/January, but in practice it is only produced after the year-end adjustment is complete or when an employee leaves. The official form is available as a PDF on the NTA site; in freee it is generated via 人事労務 → 書類出力. For company expense purposes, salary is recorded by accrual date (a December salary paid in January still counts as December, using the 未払費用 accrued-liability entry), but for the recipient's income tax, the calendar-year principle applies based on the actual payment date, not the accrual date — these are two different reference points that are easy to confuse in bookkeeping. On Japanese tax forms, a triangle ▲ is used instead of a minus sign (an empty △ is used for special cases); when there is an overpayment, the last field on a paper form should be left at zero rather than marked with a minus. It is generally easier to carry an overpayment forward against future payments than to request a refund — a refund is seen as cumbersome and can trigger additional scrutiny (opinion from the chat, unconfirmed).

Source: https://www.nta.go.jp/taxes/tetsuzuki/shinsei/annai/hotei/23100051.htm — Official withholding certificate (gensen choshuhyo) form on the NTA site..