tax

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Panel advises tax increase of 3.3 trillion yen

The government Tax Commission on November 25 submitted to Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro a report recommending a tax increase of 3.3 trillion yen through the abolition of the fixed-rate cuts in income and residential taxes from 2007.

Currently, 20 percent (up to 250,000 yen) of the income tax and 15 percent of the residential tax (up to 40,000 yen) is deducted automatically for salaried workers. However, the government had already decided to scale down the deduction by half in 2006.

Japanese Communist Party Policy Commission Chair Koike Akira on the same day criticized the Tax Commission's tax reform plan, saying, "Increasing taxes in times of declining incomes is outrageous."

Koike said, "The Tax Commission uses the economic recovery as the reason for the tax increase, but the income of salaried workers and other working people are actually falling. This kind of reform is unacceptable."
- Akahata, November 26, 2005