The Rise in Care-Home Food and Housing Charges Falls Only on the Upper Two Tiers Inside the Tax-Exempt Group — Japan's Supplementary Benefit Line Moves With the Pension Revision

From 1 August 2026[1], people using long-term care facilities and short-stay services in Japan pay more for food and accommodation. The legal basis is Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare Notification No. 88 of 2026.

Not everyone pays more. The leaflet the Health and Welfare Bureau for the Elderly distributed to local authorities limits the scope.

From August 2026, for those falling within Tiers 3-A and 3-B, food charges rise by 30 to 60 yen per day, and accommodation charges rise by 100 yen per day except for some residents.

The subsidy for food and accommodation is called the supplementary benefit, and it covers residence-tax-exempt households. Inside that group, residents are sorted into four tiers by income and savings. Only the upper two move this time; Tier 1 at 300 yen and Tier 2 at 390 yen for food[1], both for residents in a facility, stay where they are.

In figures: for residents in a facility, the food charge goes from 650 to 680 yen for Tier 3-A, and 1,360 to 1,420 yen for Tier 3-B[1]. Short stays carry separate figures, moving from 1,000 to 1,030 yen for Tier 3-A and 1,300 to 1,360 yen for Tier 3-B[1]. Accommodation in a shared room at a special nursing home goes from 430 to 530 yen[1] for Tier 3-B, and in a conventional private room from 880 to 980 yen. For a Tier 3-B resident in a facility, food and accommodation together rise by 160 yen a day, roughly 4,800 yen a month.

Residents outside the subsidy are affected too. The standard food charge rises by 100 yen a day, to 1,545 yen[1].

The entrance to the supplementary benefit is whether a household pays residence tax. That is a single line: cross it and you are outside, stay under it and you are inside.

What happens after that is not uniform. Within the same tax-exempt group, residents are divided three ways by pension income plus total income: 826,500 yen or less for Tier 2, above that and up to 1.2 million yen for Tier 3-A, and above 1.2 million for Tier 3-B[1]. Public assistance recipients and old-age welfare pension recipients in tax-exempt households fall into Tier 1.

Income is not the only test. Savings are examined as well. For a single person the ceilings are 6.5 million yen for Tier 2, 5.5 million for Tier 3-A and 5 million for Tier 3-B[1], and exceeding them removes the benefit entirely. For couples, 10 million yen is added to each figure.

So inside the single line of tax exemption there are three income lines and three asset lines. This increase was aimed at the upper two of the income tiers.

One more thing moves in the same August: the threshold that separates the tiers. The ministry's notice states it directly.

The reference materials include the revision, currently being drafted and due to take effect in August, of the threshold for the resident burden tiers (from 809,000 yen to 826,500 yen).

The level of the charge, the line that divides who pays it, and the position of that line. All three move at once here, and taking them in order shows the design.

Start with the position of the line. The rise from 809,000 to 826,500 yen follows the fiscal 2025 pension revision, as the document states. When pension amounts go up, people assessed on pension income move automatically into a higher tier. What is received rises while what remains falls. Moving the boundary by the same amount prevents that. The position of a tier is set by the movement of the figures used to assess it, not by the convenience of the benefit.

Next, the line that divides who pays. Tiers 1 and 2 were held; only 3-A and 3-B went up. Within the same tax-exempt group, someone whose pension and income exceed 1.2 million yen is treated differently from someone at or below 826,500. A single line decides eligibility, and then a second set of lines distributes cost by income inside it. A system with only one line cannot aim this way.

Then the level itself. About 4,800 yen a month for Tier 3-B looks small on its own. Residence in a care facility normally runs in years, though, and the annual figure is roughly 58,000 yen. Tier 3-B covers tax-exempt households whose pension and income exceed 1.2 million yen. Set 58,000 yen against an income in the low 1.2 millions and the smallness of the figure stops being an explanation.

Fine-grained tiers make it possible to distribute cost by capacity to pay. They also carry a property: the closer you sit above a boundary, the worse you do. Someone with pension and income of 1,200,001 yen and someone with 1,199,999 yen differ by 740 yen a day in food charges. Adding tiers to avoid regressivity creates steps between the tiers. Removing the steps requires a continuous formula, which makes assessment heavier to administer.

The same shape appears in the operation of public assistance, as seen in what the April 2026 revision of the public assistance implementation guidelines changed（このサイトの記事）. The line that decides who is covered and the line that decides how much each person receives are designed as separate things. Counting the people a system provides for but does not reach can follow the method in policy exclusion and non-take-up（このサイトの記事）. A test that requires declaring savings carries the possibility that the declaration itself keeps people away.

Further Reading

• 『介護格差』 (Care Inequality)（外部サイト、新しいタブで開きます） (Yasuhiro Yuki, Iwanami Shoten). An account, drawn from practice, of what separates those who can obtain care services from those who cannot. Useful for seeing where the tier boundaries discussed here land in daily life.

References

Request for Cooperation in Publicising the August 2026 Revision of the Benefit for Designated Facility Residents (Long-Term Care Insurance Update Vol.1506) — Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Long-Term Care Insurance Planning Division and Health and Welfare for the Elderly Division (2026). Welfare and Medical Service Agency, WAM NET

Long-Term Care Insurance Update Archive — Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (2026). Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare

On the Fiscal 2026 Revision of Long-Term Care Fees — Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (2026). Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare