Ministerial Order on the Useful Life, etc. of Depreciable Assets
減価償却資産の耐用年数等に関する省令
A Ministry of Finance Order (財務省令) of tables: the useful life (耐用年数) of each kind of depreciable asset (減価償却資産) — buildings, equipment, vehicles, software, livestock and the rest — and the depreciation rate (償却率) that goes with each useful life, the figures with which depreciation (償却費) is worked out for income tax and corporation tax.
- Text in force since
- Promulgated
- Articles
- 6
- Amendments on the way
- 0
What this law does
- It sets the useful life of depreciable assets other than mining rights, tunnels, storage rights, concession rights for public facilities, tree-felling rights and fishing-port water facility operating rights by table, according to the kind of asset: Appended Table 1 (別表第一) for tangible assets other than machinery and equipment — buildings, building fixtures (建物附属設備), structures (構築物), ships, aircraft, vehicles, tools, and furniture and fixtures (器具及び備品); Appended Table 2 for machinery and equipment (機械及び装置), by the industry it is used in; Appended Table 3 for intangible assets such as patents, trademarks, software and goodwill (営業権); and Appended Table 4 for living things such as cattle, horses and fruit trees. Assets used to treat waste water or smoke that Appended Table 5 lists take its lives instead — 18 years for structures and 5 for machinery and equipment — and assets used for research and development that Appended Table 6 lists take its lives, such as 3 years for software.(Art. 1(1), Art. 1(1)(i), Art. 1(1)(ii), Art. 1(1)(iii), Art. 1(1)(iv), Art. 2(1), Appended Table 1, Appended Table 2, Appended Table 3, Appended Table 4, Appended Table 5, Appended Table 6) (the provisions it rests on)
Read the full overview
- For a building, Appended Table 1 sets the life by structure and use: a steel-framed reinforced concrete or reinforced concrete (鉄骨鉄筋コンクリート造又は鉄筋コンクリート造) office is 50 years, a home of that structure 47 and a shop 39; a wooden (木造) office is 24 years, and a wooden home or shop 22; a metal-framed office is 38 years where the frame is more than 4 millimetres thick and 22 where it is 3 millimetres or less. Among building fixtures, electrical equipment including lighting (other than storage-battery power equipment) and plumbing, sanitary and gas equipment are 15 years, air-conditioning and heating equipment whose refrigerator output is 22 kilowatts or less is 13, and simple shop fittings (店用簡易装備) are 3.(Appended Table 1) (the provisions it rests on)
- Other rows of Appended Table 1 a small business often meets: an ordinary car (not one of 0.66 litres or less, a goods vehicle, a news-reporting vehicle, a special-purpose vehicle or one used in a transport, rental or driving-school business) is 6 years, one of 0.66 litres or less 4, and a two- or three-wheeled motor vehicle 3; a personal computer other than a server is 4 years and a copier 5; office desks, chairs and cabinets are 15 years if mainly of metal and 8 otherwise; and room air-conditioners and heaters counted as furniture and fixtures are 6 years.(Appended Table 1) (the provisions it rests on)
- In Appended Table 2, machinery and equipment has a life by the industry it serves — for example 10 years for food manufacturing, 8 for a restaurant (飲食店業用設備), 13 for laundry, barber, beauty or bath businesses and 15 for car maintenance. In Appended Table 3, a patent right is 8 years, a trademark right 10, software 5 (3 for a master copy made to be copied and sold) and goodwill 5; in Appended Table 4, a breeding dairy cow is 4 years and a Satsuma mandarin tree 28.(Appended Table 2, Appended Table 3, Appended Table 4) (the provisions it rests on)
- Each useful life has its depreciation rate: for an asset acquired on or after 1 April 2007, Appended Table 8 gives the straight-line method's (定額法) rate — 0.250 for a 4-year life, 0.020 for 50 years — and the declining-balance method's (定率法) rate, revised rate (改定償却率) and guarantee rate (保証率) are in Appended Table 9 for an asset acquired by 31 March 2012 and in Appended Table 10 for one acquired on or after 1 April 2012 (0.500, 1.000 and 0.12499 for a 4-year life). For an asset acquired on or before 31 March 2007, Appended Table 7 gives the rates of the old straight-line method (旧定額法) and the old declining-balance method (旧定率法), and its residual value (残存価額) is its acquisition cost (取得価額) times the share in Appended Table 11 — one tenth for assets in Appended Tables 1, 2, 5 and 6 other than software, nothing for intangible assets and software — or, for cattle and horses, that amount or 100,000 yen, whichever is less.(Art. 4(1), Art. 5(1), Art. 5(1)(i), Art. 5(1)(ii), Art. 6(1), Art. 6(2), Appended Table 7, Appended Table 8, Appended Table 9, Appended Table 10, Appended Table 11) (the provisions it rests on)
- An individual or corporation that acquires a used asset and puts it to use in its business may use, instead of the life in the tables, the number of years it can still be used from then, or — for an asset in Appended Table 1, 2, 5 or 6 whose remaining years are hard to estimate — 20% of the table's life if that life has passed in full, or the table's life less the years passed plus 20% of the years passed if it has passed in part, never less than 2 years. Fractions of a year are dropped. The second, simplified method cannot be used where the capital expenditure (資本的支出) on the asset to put it to use is more than half of its acquisition cost.(Art. 3(1), Art. 3(1)(i), Art. 3(1)(ii), Art. 3(1)(ii)(a), Art. 3(1)(ii)(b), Art. 3(5)) (the provisions it rests on)
Amendments
A Japanese law is changed by another law or order that rewrites it — an . No amendment to this law is waiting to come into force. Its latest amendments are below. This law's amendments page lists every amendment e-Gov records and, for those whose changes this site has read, shows them provision by provision, in Japanese and English.
10 amendments already in force
22 May 2026
The text on this site
Ministerial Order Partially Amending the Ministerial Order on the Useful Life, etc. of Depreciable Assets
減価償却資産の耐用年数等に関する省令の一部を改正する省令
1 April 2026
Ministerial Order Partially Amending the Ministerial Order on the Useful Life, etc. of Depreciable Assets
減価償却資産の耐用年数等に関する省令の一部を改正する省令
1 April 2025
Ministerial Order on the Arrangement of Ministerial Orders Related to the Ministry of Finance upon the Partial Enforcement of the Act Partially Amending the Basic Act on the Formation of a Digital Society, etc. to Improve Convenience for Persons Concerned in Administrative Procedures, etc. and to Simplify and Streamline Administrative Operations through the Use of Information and Communications Technology
情報通信技術の活用による行政手続等に係る関係者の利便性の向上並びに行政運営の簡素化及び効率化を図るためのデジタル社会形成基本法等の一部を改正する法律の一部の施行に伴う財務省関係省令の整理に関する省令
18 November 2024
Ministerial Order Partially Amending the Ministerial Order on the Useful Life, etc. of Depreciable Assets and the Regulation for Enforcement of the Corporation Tax Act
減価償却資産の耐用年数等に関する省令及び法人税法施行規則の一部を改正する省令
1 April 2024
Ministerial Order Partially Amending the Ministerial Order on the Useful Life, etc. of Depreciable Assets
減価償却資産の耐用年数等に関する省令の一部を改正する省令
1 April 2022
Ministerial Order Partially Amending the Regulation for Enforcement of the Corporation Tax Act, etc.
法人税法施行規則等の一部を改正する省令
1 April 2020
Ministerial Order Partially Amending the Ministerial Order on the Useful Life, etc. of Depreciable Assets
減価償却資産の耐用年数等に関する省令の一部を改正する省令
1 April 2018
Ministerial Order Partially Amending the Ministerial Order on the Useful Life, etc. of Depreciable Assets, etc.
減価償却資産の耐用年数等に関する省令等の一部を改正する省令
1 October 2017
Ministerial Order Partially Amending the Ministerial Order on the Useful Life, etc. of Depreciable Assets
減価償却資産の耐用年数等に関する省令の一部を改正する省令
1 April 2016
e-Gov gives no title for this amendment
Who it applies to
It applies to
- Individuals and corporations — associations without legal personality (人格のない社団等) included — that work out depreciation of their assets for income tax or corporation tax.(Art. 1(1), Art. 1(4), Art. 1(6), Income Tax Act Art. 49(1), Corporation Tax Act Art. 31(1)) (the provisions it rests on)
Special rules and exceptions (4)
- Mining rights, tunnels, carbon dioxide storage rights, concession rights for public facilities (公共施設等運営権), tree-felling rights (樹木採取権) and fishing-port water facility operating rights (漁港水面施設運営権) take no life from the tables: a test-drilling right (試掘権) is 6 years for oil or flammable natural gas or carbon dioxide storage and 5 years otherwise; a concession right for public facilities, a tree-felling right or a fishing-port water facility operating right lasts the years of its term as made public or notified, with fractions of a year dropped; and mining, quarrying and storage rights and tunnels have the years the district director of the tax office recognizes.(Art. 1(1), Art. 1(2), Art. 1(2)(ii), Art. 1(2)(vi), Art. 1(2)(vii), Art. 1(2)(viii), Art. 1(3)) (the provisions it rests on)
- A corporation that takes over an asset in a qualified merger, split, contribution in kind or distribution in kind (適格組織再編成) may keep the useful life the transferring corporation used for it under the rules for used assets, instead of the tables.(Art. 3(2)) (the provisions it rests on)
- Cattle, horses, sheep and goats moved from one use in Appended Table 4 to another (from breeding to other use, say) take the number of years they can still be used from the change, with fractions of a year dropped.(Art. 3(4), Art. 3(5)) (the provisions it rests on)
- Where a corporation's business year is shorter than a year, the straight-line and declining-balance rates are scaled by the months in it — the table's rate times the months divided by 12 (for the old declining-balance method, the rate the table gives for a life of the useful life times 12 divided by the months) — counting part of a month as a month. Where the acquisition cost times the table's declining-balance rate falls below the guarantee amount (償却保証額), the revised rate (改定償却率) is scaled instead; and for each business year starting within a year after the short one ends, where the period from the short year's start to that business year's end is not more than a year, the corporation may keep using that short year's acquisition cost as the base for the declining-balance method.(Art. 4(2), Art. 4(3), Art. 5(2), Art. 5(3), Art. 5(4), Art. 5(5)) (the provisions it rests on)
How it is enforced (2)
- This Ministerial Order (省令) sets no penalties; the only step it requires of anyone is the written application of someone who wants the tax office to recognize the years of a mining right or similar asset. The Income Tax Act (Article 49(1)) and the Corporation Tax Act (Article 31(1)) count depreciation as an expense by the method of depreciation the taxpayer chooses (or, where none is chosen, the one a Cabinet Order (政令) sets), worked out as Cabinet Orders provide — for a corporation, only as much as it has entered in its accounts as an expense (損金経理), up to that amount — and this Order is made under Article 129 of the Order for Enforcement of the Income Tax Act and Article 56 of the Order for Enforcement of the Corporation Tax Act, which this site does not hold, to give the useful lives and rates for that.(Enacting Stmt. 1, Art. 1(4), Income Tax Act Art. 49(1), Corporation Tax Act Art. 31(1)) (the provisions it rests on)
- The useful life of a mining right (採掘権), quarrying and similar rights, a tunnel (坑道) or a carbon dioxide storage right (貯留権) is the number of years the district director of the tax office () recognizes on a written application stating, among other things, the planned and recent yearly amounts mined or injected; the director examines it without delay and notifies the decision in writing. The director may change the recognized years where a special reason arises that makes them unfit for working out depreciation, notifying that in writing too; the change takes effect from the year, or business year, in which it is made.(Art. 1(2)(i), Art. 1(2)(iii), Art. 1(2)(iv), Art. 1(2)(v), Art. 1(4), Art. 1(5), Art. 1(6), Art. 1(7), Art. 1(8)) (the provisions it rests on)
How it connects to other laws
It also names 25 laws not yet held here.
Where the translation comes from
- 195
The Ministry of Justice's translation is shown only where the Japanese it translates matches the law in force today. Everywhere else the English is a machine translation, marked on the paragraph itself.
Only the Japanese is the law, and no lawyer has reviewed the machine translation.
Sources
Everything this page rests on
- e-Gov (Digital Agency)減価償却資産の耐用年数等に関する省令 — the text in force from 2026-05-22Original
- e-Gov (Digital Agency)減価償却資産の耐用年数等に関する省令 — revision historyOriginal
- Machine translation, not official
- Machine translation, corrected on review, not official
- Written for this site with AIEnglish titles of amending laws, written for this site
- Written for this site with AIDescriptions of each law, written for this site
- Written for this site with AIEnglish title of a law in this collection, written for this site
- Worked out by this site from e-Gov's text