Bank statements for a Japanese tax return (kakutei shinkoku): using them, keeping them, and the CSV

Published 17 October 2026 · by Tekiba

Who has to keep books

The rules apply to anyone with business, real-estate or forestry income: “不動産所得、事業所得または山林所得のある方。” They apply even in a year with no tax to file: “所得税及び復興特別所得税の申告が必要ない方も、記帳・帳簿等の保存制度の対象となります。” The tax year is the calendar year, “1年間（1月1日から12月31日までの間）”, and the return is due by “確定申告期限（翌年3月15日）” — 15 March of the following year.

White or blue: what each files

A white return attaches a statement of income and expenses: “総収入金額や必要経費の内容を記載した書類（収支内訳書など）の添付が必要になります。” The books behind it may be simple. The NTA allows “記帳に当たっては、一つ一つの取引ごとではなく、日々の合計金額のみをまとめて記載するなど、簡易な方法で記載してもよいことになっています。” (Instead of each transaction, you may record, for example, only each day's total.)

A blue return needs approval in advance and gives tax advantages in exchange for fuller books. Double-entry bookkeeping is the standard, but simpler books are allowed too: “現金出納帳、売掛帳、買掛帳、経費帳、固定資産台帳のような帳簿を備え付けて簡易な記帳をするだけでもよいことになっています。” (A cash book, receivables, payables, expenses and fixed-asset ledgers, kept simply, can be enough.) The larger blue-return deductions need double-entry books and a balance sheet and profit-and-loss statement attached to the return.

In neither case does the NTA list the bank statements themselves among the attachments. They are the source of the figures, and a record you hold.

How a bank statement goes into your books

Each line on the statement is money that came in or went out of a business account. In the books it becomes a sale, an expense, a transfer or a private withdrawal. How that works in practice:

1. Get the year's statements, January to December. If a statement period crosses the year end, split it at 31 December. When December's statement ends before the 31st shows how to find the year-end balance.
2. Turn them into rows. Accounting software takes a CSV far faster than lines can be typed. For freee, the format is in freee bank statement CSV upload; other software publishes its own.
3. Check the rows before they go in. The opening balance plus every row should reach the closing balance. Reconcile a bank statement before you import it lists the checks.
4. Record each line. Assign each row to an account. Private spending from a business account is usually recorded as the owner's drawings (事業主貸) rather than left out; leaving it out means the balance in the books will not match the bank.
5. Agree the year-end balance. On a blue return with a balance sheet, the bank balance in your books at 31 December should be the bank's.

How long to keep bank statements

For a blue return, the NTA's booklet puts the bank passbook in the group of cash and deposit records — “領収証、小切手控、預金通帳、借用証など” (receipts, cheque stubs, bank passbooks, loan notes and the like) — and gives them seven years, with an exception: “前々年分の事業所得及び不動産所得の金額が300万円以下の方は、５年間となります。” (Five years for those whose business and real-estate income two years earlier was ¥3 million or less.) Tax Answer No.2070 sums up: “これらの帳簿および書類などは、原則として7年間保存することとされていますが、書類によっては5年間でよいものもあります。”

For a white return, Tax Answer No.2080 gives two periods:

The white-return table does not name bank statements separately; they fall among the documents. The periods do not start on the date of the statement. The booklet counts them from “翌年３月15日の翌日から” — the day after 15 March of the year after the one in which the document was made or received.

A PDF statement, and the CSV made from it

Statements increasingly arrive as PDFs rather than on paper. The NTA's booklet says that where information such as invoices and receipts is exchanged as data rather than paper, “請求書や領収書などの情報を紙ではなく電子データでやりとりした場合には、電子データのまま保存する必要があります。” Whether that rule reaches a statement you download from online banking is a question for the tax office or your accountant. The same booklet sets further conditions for keeping such data, among them preventing alteration and being able to search it, so keeping a file is not by itself the whole answer. What this page can say is narrower: keep the PDF as the bank gave it, and do not let the CSV stand in for it.

The CSV is a working copy for your accounting software. It does not replace the statement it came from, and converting the PDF does not change or delete the PDF.

Doing it in the browser

A bank statement shows every payment you made and received. LedgerDrop converts it on your own computer: the page reads the PDF in the browser and the statement is not uploaded. Convert a bank statement to CSV without uploading it explains how to check that for yourself.

One limit to know first: the layouts LedgerDrop is tested on, listed on the formats page, come from banks in the United States, Canada, Australia and Singapore. No Japanese bank's statement is among them; Japanese bank statement layouts sets out what four banks publish and why. LedgerDrop checks the rows it reads against the balances the statement prints, so a Japanese statement it misreads is likely to show up as a failed check. It may also not read at all; try one before relying on it. If your bank offers the period as a CSV download, that comes from the bank's own records and is the better start.

What this page cannot tell you

Whether you should file white or blue, which deductions you qualify for, and how a particular transaction should be recorded are questions for the tax office or a licensed tax accountant (税理士). The NTA's pages read here state the law as of 1 April 2026, and its page on books already lists leaflets headed “【令和９年分確定申告から】” — for returns from the 2027 tax year on. Read the NTA's pages again for any later year.

Questions