Can multiple subsidies and grants be combined?

In principle yes, but double-counting the same expense across two programs is forbidden (treated as fraud). In addition, individual programs may include explicit "cannot combine with X" clauses. AutonoMath's POST /v1/programs/check_compatibility enforces 181 exclusion rules (125 exclude + 17 prerequisite + 15 absolute + 24 other) and returns conflicts immediately when given two program_ids.

Is there a recommended order to apply for these five categories?

Standard order: Certification, then Subsidy/Grant, then Loan, then Tax Incentive. Certifications act as prerequisites or scoring bonuses for the rest, subsidies/grants reduce upfront cash burden, loans cover the remaining gap, and tax incentives provide legitimate tax reduction at year-end. AutonoMath's GET /v1/am/list_open_programs returns programs ordered along this sequence given a corporate profile.

What are typical subsidy acceptance rates?

Highly program-dependent. Business Restructuring Subsidy: 30-50%. Monozukuri Subsidy: 40-60%. IT Introduction Subsidy: 60-80%. AutonoMath holds 2,286 actual case studies and exposes them via GET /v1/case_studies/search by program_id. Acceptance rates are derived from the secretariat's published selection results, never estimated independently.

Should I apply for a loan or subsidy first?

Subsidies are paid in arrears (after project completion), so a loan is typically used to bridge cash flow during the project. The standard sequence: (1) receive subsidy approval notice, (2) take a Marukei loan or Credit-Guarantee-backed loan for working capital, (3) execute the project and pay expenses, (4) submit the subsidy claim and receive payment, (5) optionally prepay the loan. AutonoMath's GET /v1/programs/search?include_loans=true joins loan_programs and programs in one call.

Do tax incentives require a separate application?

Most tax incentives are two-step: (1) prior certification (e.g., Management Capability Enhancement Plan), and (2) filing the relevant attachment with the annual tax return. Some, such as the R&D Tax Credit, do not require prior certification. AutonoMath's GET /v1/tax-incentives/search returns 35 structured tax_rulesets with requirements, application procedure, and eligible asset types.

Glossary

Definitions of the five Japanese public-support categories — subsidy, grant, loan, tax incentive, and certification — plus AutonoMath schema vocabulary (tier, unified_id, am_entity_facts, exclusion rules) for English-speaking developers consuming the API and MCP server.

Last updated: 2026-04-26 JST · Sources: METI / MHLW / SME Agency / National Tax Agency / Japan Finance Corporation primary documents · Related: Facts · Japanese version

Five-category comparison

Quick comparison of the five categories — repayment, screening, funding source, cash benefit.
Term	Repayment	Screening	Funded by	Cash benefit
Subsidy	Not required	Competitive	Tax revenue	Direct payment
Grant	Not required	Requirements-met	Employment Insurance	Direct payment
Loan	Required + interest	Credit review	Public finance	Low-interest lending
Tax incentive	Not required (reduction)	Requirements-met	Foregone tax	Tax reduction
Certification	—	Plan review	—	Indirect (scoring bonus)

Term details

Subsidy (補助金 / hojokin)

A non-refundable financial grant from a Japanese government body (national ministry or local government) to a business, awarded to advance a policy goal — industrial promotion, regional revitalization, decarbonization, DX adoption, etc. Repayment is not required, but a results report (jisseki houkokusho) is mandatory; refunds may be ordered for misuse, fraud, or off-purpose spending. Funded by tax revenue, so a competitive screening (open call + selection) applies and acceptance rates range 30-80% depending on the program. Examples: Business Restructuring Subsidy (METI, up to ¥150M), Monozukuri Subsidy (SMRJ, up to ¥40M), IT Introduction Subsidy (SME Agency, up to ¥4.5M). Roughly 80% of AutonoMath's 10,790 searchable programs fall in this category.

Vs. Grant: Grant is requirements-met (no competition); Subsidy is competitive.
Vs. Loan: Loan requires repayment with interest; Subsidy is non-refundable but paid in arrears (bridge financing often needed).
Endpoint: GET /v1/programs/search?kind=subsidy

Grant (助成金 / joseikin)

Functionally similar to a subsidy, but the term is reserved primarily for employment- and labor-related programs administered by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW). Awarded on a requirements-met basis: there is no competitive selection or acceptance ratio; applications are accepted until the annual budget is exhausted. Funded by the Employment Insurance two-business account (employer contribution). Examples: Career-Up Grant (non-regular to regular conversion, up to ¥800k per worker), Human Resources Development Grant (training expense), Work-Life Balance Grant (childcare/nursing leave), Work Improvement Grant (wage increase + capital investment). Specific qualifiers apply — e.g., delinquent social-insurance payment disqualifies.

Vs. Subsidy: Grant has no competitive selection; Subsidy does.
Application desks: Prefectural Labour Bureau / Hello Work (vs. METI bureaus or program secretariats for subsidies).
Endpoint: GET /v1/programs/search?kind=subsidy&authority=厚生労働省

Loan (融資 / yuushi, public financing)

Lending from public financial institutions — Japan Finance Corporation (JFC), Shoko Chukin Bank, or private bank loans guaranteed by the Credit Guarantee Corporation. Repayment with interest is required, but rates (0.5-2% annually), terms (5-20 years), and unsecured/unguaranteed brackets are far more favorable than commercial bank loans. Examples: Marukei Loan (Chamber-of-Commerce-recommended, unsecured + unguaranteed, up to ¥20M), New Business Start-up Loan (JFC, up to ¥72M), Super-L Loan for agriculture (JFC, up to ¥300M), Safety-Net Guarantee (Credit Guarantee Corporation). AutonoMath decomposes 108 loan programs along three axes: collateral / individual guarantor / third-party guarantor.

Vs. Subsidy: Subsidy is non-refundable but paid in arrears; Loan repays with interest but funds upfront — combining them is the norm.
Screening axes: Credit history (no tax delinquency), business plan, collateral / guarantor.
Endpoint: GET /v1/loan-programs/search

Tax Incentive (税制優遇 / zeisei yuugu)

A program that applies reductions, special depreciation, or tax credits to corporate tax, income tax, fixed-asset tax, or consumption tax. Examples: SME Investment Promotion Tax (30% special depreciation or 7% tax credit on machinery), R&D Tax Credit (6-14% credit on qualifying expenses), Wage-Increase Promotion Tax Credit (up to 40% of incremental payroll), Fixed-Asset Tax Special Measures (50% reduction with Management Capability Enhancement Plan certification). Reductions translate directly into cash-flow improvement, and unlike subsidies there is no rejection risk (requirements-met basis). Many require a two-step structure: prior certification + filing during the annual tax return.

Vs. Subsidy: Subsidy pays cash; Tax Incentive reduces tax owed (no benefit if loss-making).
Vs. Certification: SME Investment Promotion Tax and similar require Management Capability Enhancement Plan certification first — Certification comes upstream.
Endpoint: GET /v1/tax-incentives/search

Certification (認定制度 / nintei seido)

A government program that formally recognizes ("certifies") a business as meeting policy criteria. Examples: Management Innovation Plan (prefectural certification), Regional Future Driver Company (METI selection), Health Management Excellence Corporation (METI + Japan Health Council), Management Capability Enhancement Plan (competent-minister certification), Business Continuity Capability Plan (METI bureau certification). No direct cash benefit, but certifications serve as the foundation for: subsidy scoring bonuses (raising acceptance odds), preferential loan terms (JFC interest-rate reductions), public-procurement scoring bonuses (overall-evaluation tendering), and tax-incentive prerequisites. Certifications themselves are free apart from stamp duty; the application document is what is reviewed. AutonoMath has structured 66 certification schemes.

Vs. Subsidy: Subsidy is cash; Certification is a credential (prerequisite for subsidy / loan / tax).
Acquisition order: Certification first, then Subsidy / Tax Incentive application.
Endpoint: GET /v1/certifications/search

AutonoMath schema vocabulary

Terms specific to the AutonoMath data model and API surface, useful when reading endpoint responses or designing AI agent workflows.

tier: Per-program data-quality grade, populated from actual completeness of fields and source-URL liveness (not opinion). Tiers S / A / B / C are searchable; tier X is a quarantine reserved for programs with structural defects (no amount, broken URL, aggregator-only source, ambiguous duplicate). Production breakdown: S=114, A=1,340, B=3,292, C=6,044, X=1,923. All search endpoints exclude tier X by default. Tier X subcategories include external_info_entry, no_amount_data, placeholder_url, dedup_ambiguous_resolved.
unified_id: Stable canonical identifier assigned to each entity (program, corporation, certification, etc.). Used to cross-reference between programs, case studies, exclusion rules, laws, and enforcement records. Survives source-URL changes and editorial revisions. If a program is restructured into a new scheme, it receives a new unified_id with a relation row in am_relation linking the predecessor — preserving lineage without conflating identities.
exclusion rules: AutonoMath's 181-row table capturing cross-program compatibility constraints. Composition: 125 explicit-exclusion rules (programs that cannot be combined for the same expense), 17 prerequisite rules (program A requires program B first), 15 absolute rules (always-disqualifying conditions), and 24 other (annotation-style notes). Surfaced via POST /v1/programs/check_compatibility.
am_entity_facts: The fact table in the AutonoMath EAV (entity-attribute-value) schema. Each row is a (entity_id, field_name, value, source_id) tuple, supporting time-versioned and provenance-tracked attributes for any entity. 6.12M rows. Companion to am_entities (503,930 rows across 12 record_kinds: adoption, corporate_entity, statistic, enforcement, invoice_registrant, program, case_study, tax_measure, law, certification, authority, document).
source_url / fetched_at: Provenance columns present on every row. source_url points to the primary source — a Japanese government ministry, prefecture, or Japan Finance Corporation page. Aggregator sites (noukaweb, hojyokin-portal, biz.stayway, etc.) are banned from source_url — this is enforced because past incidents created fraud risk. fetched_at records when AutonoMath last retrieved that page (rendered as "source fetched" — never "last verified" — to remain semantically honest under Japan's misleading-display law).
MCP (Model Context Protocol): An open protocol from Anthropic (version 2025-06-18) for AI agents to call typed tools over stdio. AutonoMath ships an MCP server (autonomath-mcp on PyPI) exposing 72 tools covering subsidy / loan / tax / certification search, exclusion checks, case-study retrieval, and provenance lookups. No SDK required — clients connect over stdio.
houjin_bangou (corporate number, 法人番号): Japan's 13-digit national corporate identifier issued by the National Tax Agency. AutonoMath stores corporate numbers for 87,076 corporate entities and 6,455 enforcement records, enabling direct lookup of sanctions, adopted subsidies, and qualified-invoice registration status by corporate number.
jGrants: Japan's official online application portal for national subsidies, run by the SME Agency. jGrants handles applications and document submission but does not provide discovery, compatibility checking, or cross-program comparison. AutonoMath complements jGrants by sitting upstream of it — identifying which programs are worth applying for, then jGrants is where the application is filed.
qualified invoice (適格請求書): Japan's invoice-system document issued by businesses registered with the National Tax Agency (registration number starts with T). Required for the recipient to claim consumption-tax input credit since 2023-10-01. Bookyou Inc. is a registered issuer (T8010001213708, registered 2025-05-12). AutonoMath surfaces 13,801 invoice registrants (PDL v1.0 delta data; full ~4M-row monthly bulk pending).

FAQ

Q. Can multiple subsidies and grants be combined?: In principle yes, but double-counting the same expense across two programs is forbidden (treated as fraud under the term "duplicated expense recording"). Individual programs may also include explicit "cannot combine with X" clauses. AutonoMath's POST /v1/programs/check_compatibility enforces 181 exclusion rules (125 exclude + 17 prerequisite + 15 absolute + 24 other) and returns conflicts immediately when given two program_ids.
Q. Is there a recommended order to apply for these five categories?: Standard order: Certification → Subsidy/Grant → Loan → Tax Incentive. Certifications act as prerequisites or scoring bonuses for the rest, subsidies/grants reduce upfront cash burden, loans cover the remaining gap, and tax incentives provide legitimate tax reduction at year-end. AutonoMath's GET /v1/am/list_open_programs returns programs ordered along this sequence given a corporate profile.
Q. What are typical subsidy acceptance rates?: Highly program-dependent. Business Restructuring Subsidy: 30-50%. Monozukuri Subsidy: 40-60%. IT Introduction Subsidy: 60-80%. AutonoMath holds 2,286 actual case studies and exposes them via GET /v1/case_studies/search by program_id. Acceptance rates are derived from the secretariat's published selection results, never estimated independently by AutonoMath.
Q. Should I apply for a loan or subsidy first?: Subsidies are paid in arrears (after project completion), so a loan is typically used to bridge cash flow during the project. The standard sequence: (1) receive subsidy approval notice, (2) take a Marukei loan or Credit-Guarantee-backed loan for working capital, (3) execute the project and pay expenses, (4) submit the subsidy claim and receive payment, (5) optionally prepay the loan. AutonoMath's GET /v1/programs/search?include_loans=true joins loan_programs and programs in one call.
Q. Do tax incentives require a separate application?: Most tax incentives are two-step: (1) prior certification (e.g., Management Capability Enhancement Plan), and (2) filing the relevant attachment with the annual tax return. Some, such as the R&D Tax Credit, do not require prior certification. AutonoMath's GET /v1/tax-incentives/search returns 35 structured tax_rulesets with requirements, application procedure, and eligible asset types.

Glossary

Five-category comparison

Term details

AutonoMath schema vocabulary

FAQ

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