To facilitate forest management as part of climate change mitigation and adaptation, theForest Environment Transfer Tax (FETT) was introduced in Japan in 2019, representing aform of payment for ecosystem services. In this study, we focused on the introduction ofthe tax and the status of its use based on an analysis covering Japan’s 47 prefectures. Thisinvolved reviewing policy processes related to FETT and conducting a survey among rele-vant prefectural officers to identify how FETT is being used, with a focus on plans, policies,and systems related to forest data development and exchanges. The proportions of bothtotal and FETT budgets used for forest data development were significant. Several prefec-tures are improving forest-related data in a two-way manner by coordinating with munici-palities. Correlation analysis revealed that prefectures with greater proportions of privatelyowned forests allocated more budget to forest data development, which is in line with theFETT’s intended purpose. This result suggests that the absolute size of such forestlands isless important, but that the proportion of privately owned forests carries political and socialweight that could be a critical factor in budget allocation.