Based on the Act on the Use of Numbers to Identify Specific Individuals in Administrative Procedures, enacted on May 24, 2013 (promulgated on May 31, 2013), the National Tax Agency assigns a 13-digit number to corporations.
Just like the “My Number” system for individuals, each corporation is assigned a unique number. This allows corporations with the same name to be distinguished, and makes it easy to integrate with other services.
As noted above, corporate numbers began to be published relatively recently. For corporations that already existed before the system started, the publication date of their corporate number is October 5, 2015. This is, of course, different from the date of incorporation.
For corporations established after October 6, 2015, the publication date of the corporate number is close to the incorporation date. In either case, there is a short administrative period between incorporation and publication, so the two dates are not identical.
Religious organizations that have not obtained corporate status are not assigned corporate numbers. However, since incorporation offers many advantages, the majority of religious organizations are believed to acquire corporate status.
This is also why many aspects of Japan’s religious landscape cannot be definitively determined: without voluntary cooperation from religious groups that lack corporate status, neither their numbers nor their activities can be fully understood.
