About Rent Support Benefits in Japan

This time, we would like to walk you through the “Notice of Rent Support Benefits” announced on July 3 and
the “Rent Support Benefits Application Guidelines” announced on July 7 by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

1. What is the purpose of the support benefits?

The purpose is to reduce the rent burden to support the businesses facing a decline in sales due to the extension of the state of emergency declared in May. Therefore, the target segment is the tenants who are business operators.

2. Who will be receiving the support benefits?

Those corporations or individual business operators who meet all of the following conditions are the segment to receive it.

As previously mentioned, the benefits are aimed at reducing the rent burden for the tenants. Hence, if a business operator is paying the loan of self-owned land/building, it cannot be defined as a tenant and it does not meet the above condition (4) for corporation and condition (3) for individual business.

3. What’s the amount of support benefits to be received?

The business operators can receive 6 times (6 months’ worth) of the “monthly benefit” calculated based on the rent of the most recent month at the time of application. The amount differs depending on if the business operator is a corporation or an individual business. (Table 1)

Table 1. Rent Support Benefits Amount (Source: Created by WP based on explanatory materials)

In this respect, if the tenant who is also a business operator rents the land/building both as a home and as a business base, the rent is applied to the support benefit conditions. However, the rent to be the calculation base for the benefit amount is limited to the rent for the business part. (Explanatory Material Q&A – Q5)

4. When will it be open for application?

The application period is July 14, 2020 to January 15, 2021. The deadline for online application is 24:00 on January 15, 2021. Only applications that have been accepted by the deadline are eligible to be the benefit recipients.

5. How to proceed the application?

The application is scheduled to open on July 14, 2020, and will be made online on the official website. For those who have difficulty applying online, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is planning to set up an “application support venue” to provide assistants to input data online. The location will be announced as soon as the details are decided.

6. What are the required documents for application?

All of the following documents will be required:

[1] Documents certifying the existence of a lease contract (lease agreement, etc.)
[2] Documents certifying the past three months’ rent payment record at the time of application (copy of bank passbook, transfer statement, etc.)
[3] Identity verification documents (driver’s license, etc.)
[4] Documents certifying the decrease in sales (tax return documents, sales ledger, etc.)

This time we quickly walk you through the Rent Support Benefits based on the announcements made by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. If you have any questions, you can also contact the Rent Support Benefit Call Center by 0120-653-930 for further information.

【Reference】

https://www.meti.go.jp/covid-19/yachin-kyufu/pdf/yachin-kyufu.pdf
https://www.meti.go.jp/covid-19/yachin-kyufu/index.html