The short answer to “Does Fukushima have a lodging tax?” comes first. Neither Fukushima Prefecture nor any of its municipalities — including Fukushima City, Koriyama, Aizuwakamatsu and Iwaki — levies a lodging tax. No draft ordinance has been submitted, and no committee to study one has been announced (checked on October 25, 2026 against the prefectural website, the prefectural assembly’s list of regular-session results and each city’s official website). At a press conference on July 29, 2024, Governor Masao Uchibori said the prefecture would watch how the tax is being introduced nationwide, but added, “We are not considering any specific study of a lodging tax.” No lodging-tax bill has come before the prefectural assembly since then (five regular sessions, September 2025 to September 2026). The only statutory tax guests actually pay at accommodations in the prefecture is the bathing tax (nyutozei) that municipalities levy at inns with hot springs — a standard ¥150 per person per night, raised to ¥350 in Aizuwakamatsu from October 1, 2025. This article first pins down that status from primary sources. It then takes existing schemes such as Tokyo’s 3% and Miyagi’s ¥300 and, on the hypothetical assumption that “Fukushima introduced the same model,” applies them to the estimated settled ADR and listed prices in six areas of the prefecture to estimate the effective burden per person per night. We also combine the result with the bathing tax, review the status in the five neighboring prefectures, and list what operators would need to prepare if a tax were adopted.

Fukushima’s Lodging Tax: “Not Introduced, No Study Committee” — Confirmed by the Governor’s Press Conference and Assembly Records

Let us first establish the current status from primary sources. Searching the Fukushima Prefecture website for published material on a lodging tax turns up the record of the governor’s press conference on July 29, 2024. A reporter noted that Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka had already introduced the tax and that Chiba had begun studying one, and asked for the prefecture’s view. The governor said, “We will keep watching how the tax is being introduced across the country,” but answered, “We are not considering any specific study of this lodging tax,” explaining that tourism had faced severe conditions since the Great East Japan Earthquake and the nuclear accident, and was “still in the process of recovering once again” after the slump caused by the pandemic. He went on to say the prefecture would focus on attracting visitors around a three-year cycle: the pre-DC (Destination Campaign) in 2025, the main DC in 2026 and the after-DC in 2027.

That stance has not changed since. Going back through the prefectural assembly’s list of regular-session results for five sessions — September and December 2025, and February, June and September 2026 — there is no lodging-tax ordinance or related bill. A lodging tax is a non-statutory earmarked tax: its start date is set only after the ordinance is passed and the Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications consents. With no draft ordinance on the table, taxation could not begin without at least a year or so of system design and procedures. At the municipal level, too, the official websites of Fukushima City, Koriyama, Aizuwakamatsu and Iwaki make no mention of a lodging-tax ordinance or study committee; each city’s tax pages list only the bathing tax (all checked October 25, 2026).

If anything, the prefecture’s policy points in the opposite direction from taxation — toward boosting accommodation demand. The main DC, the “Fukushima Destination Campaign,” ran from April 1 to June 30, 2026, and the prefecture’s “Come Again” (Mata Kite) discount takes ¥3,000 off stays of ¥8,000 (tax-inclusive) or more per person per night; a third phase (stays from November 1 to December 25, 2026) and a fourth phase (stays from January 4 to 30, 2027) have been announced. As a premise for any discussion of a lodging tax, it is worth noting that the prefecture is currently prioritizing visitor attraction over securing new revenue.

The Only Statutory Tax Paid in the Prefecture Is the Bathing Tax — ¥150 Standard, ¥350 in Aizuwakamatsu

So what tax do guests actually pay at accommodations in Fukushima? The answer is the bathing tax that municipalities levy at inns with hot springs (mineral-spring baths). It is a statutory earmarked tax under the Local Tax Act, with a standard rate of ¥150 per person per day. We cover the overall system in Japan Onsen Bathing Tax: ¥150 Standard, Exemptions and ¥300–350 Towns; here we take the rates for the four cities covered in this article from official sources.

Source: Compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team from each city’s official materials (as of October 25, 2026)

Aizuwakamatsu’s ¥350 is a special provision of the city tax ordinance that reads “¥150” as “¥350” for a limited ten years, from October 1, 2025 to September 30, 2035. The extra ¥200 is set aside in the “Aizuwakamatsu Hot Spring Area Revitalization Fund” and used for streetscape improvement projects in Higashiyama Onsen and Ashinomaki Onsen. The bathing tax has no rate cap, so the rate can be changed by amending the ordinance alone — the key difference from a lodging tax, which requires the minister’s consent. We follow this move alongside other revisions nationwide in Onsen Bathing Tax Rises: ¥350 Aizuwakamatsu, ¥300 Izu, 1.1–1.6% of ADR. In other words, if we talk about “taxes on a stay” in Fukushima, the main player today is not a lodging tax but the bathing tax, whose rates and exemptions vary by municipality.

Assumptions for the Estimates — Estimated Settled ADR and Per-Person Nightly Rates in Six Areas

This is the core of the analysis. We selected six cities as the prefecture’s main areas — Fukushima City, Koriyama, Aizuwakamatsu, Iwaki, Nihonmatsu (Dake Onsen) and Shirakawa — and averaged MetroEngines Research’s estimated settled ADR (per room for 2 guests, tax-exclusive equivalent) and listed prices (per room for 2 guests, tax-inclusive, all-plan average) over the 12 months from October 2025 to September 2026. Since most ordinances define the lodging-tax base as the “room-only, tax-exclusive charge per person per night,” we divide the 2-guest room figures by two to convert them to a per-person, per-night basis. The chart below shows the converted values for the ryokan and business-hotel segments; the horizontal lines mark the ¥6,000 exemption threshold used by Miyagi and Nagano, and the ¥13,000 threshold Tokyo will adopt from April 2027.

Source: Compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team from MetroEngines Research (12-month average, October 2025 to September 2026. Lower bound = estimated settled ADR ÷ 2; upper bound = listed price ÷ 1.1 ÷ 2. Shirakawa ryokan are reference values only, N=1–2)

For the ryokan segment, the lower-bound per-person nightly rate lines up in the ¥6,000–¥7,600 band: about ¥7,600 in Aizuwakamatsu, ¥7,200 in Nihonmatsu, ¥6,600 in Koriyama and ¥6,400 in Fukushima City, with Iwaki somewhat lower at about ¥4,000. The upper bound, worked back from meal-inclusive listed prices, comes to about ¥18,400 in Aizuwakamatsu and about ¥15,200–¥15,900 in Fukushima City, Koriyama and Nihonmatsu — more than double the lower bound. The gap reflects the fact that ryokan sell mainly two-meal plans, so how the room-only equivalent is carved out becomes decisive for the tax base. The business-hotel segment stays at about ¥2,900–¥3,800 on the lower bound and ¥5,400–¥7,200 even on the upper bound, straddling the ¥6,000 threshold whichever basis is used.

Applying Other Prefectures’ Schemes to Fukushima — the Exemption Threshold Decides the Burden

We apply four prefectural models that have been introduced or revised, plus two municipal models. Tokyo will move to a flat 3% rate with an exemption for stays under ¥13,000 per person per night from April 1, 2027 (Tokyo Metropolitan Government Bureau of Taxation), and Okinawa will levy 2% of the accommodation charge (capped at ¥2,000) from February 1, 2027 (Okinawa Prefecture). Miyagi has charged ¥300 per person per night, with stays under ¥6,000 exempt, since January 13, 2026 (Miyagi Prefecture); Nagano likewise charges ¥300 (¥200 for the first three years) with stays under ¥6,000 exempt from June 1, 2026; and Fukuoka has charged a flat ¥200 with no exemption threshold since April 2020 (Fukuoka Prefecture). Among municipalities, Nasu (Tochigi) introduced a six-tier scheme from ¥100 (under ¥10,000) to ¥3,000 (¥100,000 or more), and Morioka (Iwate) a flat ¥200, both on October 1, 2026 and both without an exemption threshold (Nasu & Morioka Lodging Tax from Oct 1). We summarize the national picture in Japan Lodging Tax Changes 2026-27, and estimate what Okinawa’s 2% amounts to at actual rates, municipality by municipality, in Okinawa 2% Lodging Tax from Feb 1, 2027.

Table 1 shows the results of applying these models to the lower bound (estimated settled ADR basis) for the six areas. The key to reading it is not whether the rate is high or low, but where the exemption threshold falls relative to each area’s rates.

Source: Compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team from MetroEngines Research. Tax schedules from each municipality’s published materials. Fukushima has no plan to introduce a lodging tax; these are hypothetical calculations. Shirakawa has few properties and is shown for reference only (ryokan figures are the 8-month average for February–September 2026, when both properties were available)

Under the Tokyo model, all 12 rows on the lower bound — six areas × two segments — fall short of the ¥13,000 threshold, so the burden is 0%. A flat-rate system with a high exemption threshold, transplanted to Fukushima where rates are less than half of Tokyo’s, becomes “a system that taxes almost nobody.” The Miyagi/Nagano ¥300 model splits the market at the ¥6,000 threshold: ryokan reach 4–5% — 4.7% in Fukushima City, 4.5% in Koriyama, 4.0% in Aizuwakamatsu and 4.2% in Nihonmatsu — while Iwaki ryokan and business hotels in every area are exempt. Okinawa’s 2% is a flat percentage, so it stays at 1.4–2.0% regardless of rate. Under the Nasu model, the ¥100 band for stays under ¥10,000 applies, giving 1.3–3.3% for ryokan (1.3–2.5% excluding Shirakawa, a reference value) and 2.7–3.4% for business hotels. The Fukuoka/Morioka ¥200 flat model rises to around 6% for the lower-priced business-hotel segment. Because Miyagi’s ¥6,000 threshold sits just below the lower-bound rates of ryokan in the prefecture (¥6,000–¥7,600), adopting the same model would draw a line that taxes ryokan almost across the board and business hotels hardly at all. We examine where the ¥13,000 threshold falls among actual rates in Tokyo in Tokyo Lodging Tax Goes 3% Flat in April 2027, which provides a contrast of how the same system works in regions with different price levels.

Source: Compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team from MetroEngines Research (ryokan segment, lower bound. Tokyo model omitted because it is 0% in every area. Hypothetical calculations)

Next, Table 2 shows the same calculation on the upper bound, worked back from meal-inclusive listed prices. Think of it as a “this much at most” guide for a case where meal charges are mixed into the tax base.

Source: Compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team from MetroEngines Research. Listed prices are all-plan averages and include meals, so they overstate the tax base. Hypothetical calculations

On the upper bound the picture changes. Under the Tokyo model, ryokan in Fukushima City, Koriyama, Aizuwakamatsu and Nihonmatsu exceed ¥13,000 and become subject to the 3% tax — about ¥460–¥550 per person per night, a 3.0% burden. Iwaki ryokan (about ¥9,900) and Shirakawa remain untaxed even on the upper bound. Under flat-amount models, the rate falls as prices rise: the Miyagi model gives 1.6–2.4% (3.0% only in Iwaki, which stays below ¥10,000 even on the upper bound), and the Nasu model gives 1.6–2.4% in the five areas where the ¥300 tier for ¥10,000 to under ¥20,000 applies, while Iwaki, below ¥10,000, pays ¥100 for 1.0%. Whether the reality is closer to the lower or upper bound depends on how each property sets its room-only equivalent. As Nasu’s ordinance makes clear by defining the tax base as “the so-called room-only charge and the service charges etc. attached to it,” excluding meals and consumption tax, how meal-inclusive plans are broken down determines the tax amount.

Combined with the Bathing Tax — How High the Burden Can Stack Up at Onsen Inns Under ¥10,000

Guests at hot-spring inns would pay two taxes: the bathing tax and the lodging tax. In Japan Onsen Bathing + Lodging Tax: 7.2% of ADR at Inns Under ¥10,000, we aggregated 1,152 properties in 19 hot-spring municipalities by price band and showed that, in the band where estimated settled ADR (per room, 2 guests) is under ¥10,000, the bathing tax and lodging tax together reach 7.2% of the rate (property-level median). Applying the same method to the ryokan segment in Fukushima gives Table 3. The bathing tax uses each city’s current rate (¥350 only in Aizuwakamatsu), and the lodging tax uses the four hypothetical models.

Source: Compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team from MetroEngines Research and each city’s published materials. The Tokyo model equals “bathing tax only” because every area is untaxed on the lower bound. Hypothetical calculations

Today the only burden is the bathing tax: 2.3–2.4% at ryokan in Fukushima City and Koriyama, 3.8% in Iwaki and 4.6% in Aizuwakamatsu with its ¥350 rate. Adding the Miyagi model’s ¥300 brings this to 7.1% in Fukushima City, 6.8% in Koriyama and 8.6% in Aizuwakamatsu — almost the same level as the 7.2% median for the under-¥10,000 band (per-room rate) across the 19 hot-spring municipalities shown in the earlier article. Because Iwaki’s rate is below ¥6,000, it stays exempt under the Miyagi model at 3.8%, but under the ¥200 flat model, which has no exemption threshold, it reaches 8.8% — the highest of the four cities. The structure found in the earlier article, in which flat-amount taxes weigh more heavily on lower-priced inns, is reproduced in Fukushima as well.

The chart below generalizes the pattern by price band. The horizontal axis is the per-person nightly rate (room-only, tax-exclusive), and the vertical axis is the combined bathing tax and lodging tax as a share of that rate. For cities with a ¥150 bathing tax and for Aizuwakamatsu at ¥350, it overlays no lodging tax, the Miyagi model, the Nasu model and the Tokyo model.

Source: Compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team from each municipality’s published materials (hypothetical calculation applying each scheme’s formula to price bands; not values for actual properties)

The curves tell us three things. First, the flat-amount model (Miyagi) produces the highest burden just above the ¥6,000 threshold (7.5% in ¥150 cities, 10.8% in Aizuwakamatsu), declining as the rate rises. Second, the Nasu model forms a sawtooth, jumping at the entry to each tier and falling at its exit, but generally stays within a 2–5% range. Third, the Tokyo model matches the bathing-tax-only burden below ¥13,000, with a step of around 3 percentage points at the ¥13,000 line. The lower-bound rates of ryokan in Fukushima (¥6,000–¥7,600) fall exactly in the band where the flat-amount model’s burden is highest. The fact that the price band where the burden peaks differs by type of scheme is a point operators could bring to the table if a debate ever begins.

Five Neighboring Prefectures — Miyagi Has Introduced It, Tochigi’s Study Panel Has Met Twice, the Other Three Show Nothing at Prefectural Level

Table 4 sets out the status in the five prefectures bordering Fukushima, split between the prefecture and its municipalities. The survey date is October 25, 2026, and the table is limited to what could be confirmed on prefectural websites and in materials published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

Source: Compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team from materials published by each prefecture, municipality and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (as of October 25, 2026). In a Kyodo News survey in August 2025, 92 local governments in 32 prefectures said they were considering a new lodging tax

Mapping this table onto hot-spring areas along the prefectural borders reveals how the presence or absence of a tax can affect price competition. The per-person nightly rate in Nasu is about ¥9,900 for all properties (N=49–54) and about ¥10,100 for the ryokan segment (N=28–31), so the Nasu tax adds ¥300 (3.0%) for the ¥10,000-to-under-¥20,000 tier in the ryokan segment, or ¥100 (1.0%) for the under-¥10,000 tier at the all-property median. Nasu and Shirakawa already differ in price by nearly threefold, so ¥300 is not enough to shift guest flows; but with properties on both sides of the border marketed under the same Nasu Kogen name, the ¥300 will look different once “total price including tax” displays are aligned. The relationship between Naruko (Osaki City, subject to Miyagi’s ¥300 tax) and Iizaka (Fukushima City, untaxed) is more evenly matched. The per-person nightly rate for ryokan in Osaki is about ¥6,300 (N=28–32) and for ryokan in Fukushima City about ¥6,400 (N=44–46), so their price bands overlap, and Osaki sits just above the ¥6,000 threshold. Whether Miyagi’s ¥300 is charged depends on how each property sets its room-only equivalent, and it is not charged on the Iizaka side at the same price level. Because lodging taxes are decided prefecture by prefecture, a situation where inns in the same price band on either side of a border are split solely by whether a tax applies can arise at any prefectural border.

Revenue Scale If a Tax Were Introduced — 9.6 Million Guest-Nights × Tax Amount × Taxable Share

The burden rate is a number seen from the guest’s side; from the side of the prefecture designing the system, the question is the scale of revenue. In the Japan Tourism Agency’s Overnight Travel Statistics Survey (2025, finalized annual figures), Fukushima recorded 9,599,100 guest-nights (of which 359,730 by foreign guests), and neighboring Miyagi 10,417,370. Revenue under a flat-amount tax is determined by “guest-nights × share of stays that are taxable × tax amount,” so we built the grid in Table 5 with the taxable share as the hypothetical axis.

Source: Compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team from the Japan Tourism Agency’s Overnight Travel Statistics Survey 2025 (finalized annual figures), Table 2. Taxable shares are assumptions and do not account for exemption thresholds, exemptions (school trips, children under 12, etc.) or collection costs. Fukushima has no plan to introduce a lodging tax; these are hypothetical calculations

The key takeaway is that the taxable share moves revenue far more than the choice of tax amount. Even under the ¥300 Miyagi model, revenue is about ¥1.15 billion if 40% of nights are taxable and about ¥2.88 billion if all are — a 2.5-fold difference. And what determines the taxable share is the exemption threshold. As Table 1 showed, per-person nightly rates on an estimated settled ADR basis are about ¥2,900–¥3,800 for business hotels in all six areas — below the ¥6,000 threshold — and ryokan in Iwaki (about ¥4,000) and Shirakawa also fall below it. Transplanting the Miyagi model as is would remove almost all business-hotel stays from the tax base, leaving guests at hot-spring ryokan to bear most of the revenue. A ¥200 flat model with no threshold would push the share close to 100%, but the burden at lower-priced business hotels would then rise to around 6% (Table 1). The depth of revenue and the skew of the burden are determined simultaneously by where the threshold sits, and neither can be optimized on its own.

What Operators Would Need to Prepare If a Tax Were Adopted — Lessons from the October Launches in Nasu and Morioka

Fukushima has no plan to introduce a tax, but for reference, the time from ordinance to implementation was 9–16 months in the cases of Nasu (ordinance passed June 2025 → implemented October 1, 2026) and Morioka (promulgated December 24, 2025 → implemented October 1, 2026). Drawing on our article that organized operators’ practical tasks for the two municipalities’ launches, here are the items operators in Fukushima would need to prepare in the same situation.

Source: Compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team from the official materials of Nasu, Morioka, Koriyama and Iwaki. Check with the relevant tax office on how the rules apply to each property

These are tasks that can be handled in time even if started after a tax is decided. Carving out the tax base, however, is worth putting in order in normal times. The room-only equivalent of meal-inclusive plans is a foundational figure for pricing design whether or not a lodging tax exists, and having it organized means that if the system ever changes, the response would require only a settings change.

Summary

Fukushima Prefecture and its municipalities have no lodging tax, and no draft ordinance or study committee has been announced (checked October 25, 2026). At a July 2024 press conference the governor said the prefecture was “not considering a specific study,” no bill has come before the prefectural assembly since, and policy is directed toward attracting visitors through the Destination Campaign and the “Come Again” discount. The only statutory tax guests pay at accommodations in the prefecture is the bathing tax — ¥150 standard, and ¥350 in Aizuwakamatsu for ten years through September 2035. Hypothetically applying other prefectures’ schemes, the Tokyo model’s 3% leaves every area untaxed on the lower bound, the Miyagi model’s ¥300 means 4–5% at ryokan with business hotels exempt, and a ¥200 flat model means around 6% at business hotels — it is the position of the exemption threshold, more than the rate, that decides the burden. Combined with the bathing tax under the Miyagi model, ryokan in Fukushima City and Koriyama reach around 7% and Aizuwakamatsu 8.6%, the same level as the 7.2% median for the under-¥10,000 band (per-room rate) across 19 hot-spring municipalities. Among neighboring prefectures, Miyagi has introduced a tax, Tochigi’s prefectural study panel has met twice, and municipal moves — Nasu, Yamagata City and Sado — are running ahead. Whether Fukushima chooses the same path is the prefecture’s decision, and the figures in this article are just one input to that decision. What operators can do is the normal-times preparation of organizing their room-only equivalents.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Does Fukushima Prefecture have a lodging tax?
A. No. Fukushima has not introduced a lodging tax, and neither the submission of a draft ordinance nor the establishment of a study committee has been announced (checked October 25, 2026). At a July 29, 2024 press conference, Governor Uchibori said, “We are not considering any specific study of a lodging tax,” and no lodging-tax bill came before the prefectural assembly in its five regular sessions from September 2025 to September 2026.

Q. What about lodging taxes in municipalities such as Fukushima City or Aizuwakamatsu?
A. No municipality in the prefecture — including Fukushima City, Koriyama, Aizuwakamatsu and Iwaki — has announced introducing or studying a lodging tax. Rather than a lodging tax, Aizuwakamatsu raised its bathing tax to ¥350 (standard ¥150) from October 1, 2025, as a time-limited measure through September 30, 2035.

Q. How does it differ from the bathing tax?
A. The bathing tax is a statutory earmarked tax that municipalities levy on bathing in hot springs (mineral-spring baths), at a standard ¥150 per person per day. It does not apply at inns without hot springs. A lodging tax is a non-statutory tax that prefectures or municipalities levy on staying overnight by ordinance, and it requires the consent of the Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications. At accommodations in Fukushima today, only the bathing tax applies.

Q. If one were introduced, from when and how much?
A. There is currently no plan to introduce one, so both timing and amount are undecided. For reference, in Nasu and Morioka it took 9–16 months from passage or promulgation of the ordinance to implementation. The amount would depend on the scheme. In our hypothetical estimates applying other prefectures’ schedules to Fukushima’s rates, a Tokyo-style 3% would leave typical properties below the exemption threshold and untaxed, while a Miyagi-style ¥300 would equal 4–5% of the per-person nightly rate at ryokan, with business hotels exempt.

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