Japan’s Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki has voiced his resistance to calls for reduced consumption tax rates on food and other daily necessities when the government raises the tax rate from the current 5 percent.
“Reduced rates are not necessarily needed,” said Tanigaki, who proposed doubling the consumption tax rate to 10 percent by the mid-2010s as one of his policy pledges when he announced his bid Thursday to succeed Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who is stepping down in September.
Japan is different from Europe, where in some countries sales taxes top 20 percent and reduced rates are applied to some items, he told reporters.
Is anyone else getting tired of Japanese politicians constantly trying to rationalize tax policies by pointing to other countries? Some countries in Europe take a full month off in the summertime, but I don’t see anything like that happening soon in Japan.
Tanigaki reiterated that the government should use consumption tax revenues specifically for social security purposes when the tax is raised.
This also is an obvious ploy designed to make a doubling of the tax more palatable to the rubes. If I remember correctly, the government was able to get the people to accept implementation of the consumption tax in the first place by promising it would never go over the original 3 percent. I’d be willing to bet that once the rate gets to the level the government wants, all this talk about using “consumption tax revenues specifically for social security purposes” will go right out the same window.
And you know what? I’ll also bet that the people of Japan will just suck it up and pay.
Snapped while strolling around Utsunomiya.
Note: In the interest of providing original material, I always run a search on the internet to see if anyone else has posted what I’m about to. When I ran a search for “Grib my hand”, a confused search engine suggested this:
Sylvain Bouchard
Japan Talk #033 is now available on the Japan Talk website and at FeedBurner.
* Cream of the Crop
* Vote for the Plastic Soul Band
* Kim Dae Jung and Japanese Emperor in 2002 World Cup
* North Korea propaganda videos
* Japundit listeners surging
* Brain dead in U.S. recover in Japan
* Japan to run biodiesel car in Dakar Rally
* Japan live expectancy falls
* Students and teachers want free college
* Beekeepers wary of government alien species list
* Otaku take issue with cops over Akihabara
* Miniature pigs big in Japan
* Fish recruited to fight terror
* Osaka storing vintage wines
* Railroads to issue maternity badges
* Be the curry
* Go pluck yourself!
Japundit Contributors:
Danny Bloom in Taiwan, David Weber in Tokyo, Marie Mockett in New York, Sylvain Bouchard in Sendai, Mike Plugh in Akita, Harvey, in Osaka, ghoti in Fukuoka, Chef Jo in Tottori, Mr. Wake in Kamakura, Tokyoid in London, Bill (Ampontan) Sakovich in Saga, JP in Tokyo
Music
Podsafe Music Network
* My Old Pickup Truck Never Lets Me Down, Doc Bates
* Gutbucket, James Brown
MF247
* Genso No Tabi (Fantastic Journey), Swing the Earthy Parade
Links of Interest:
* Cream of the Crop
* Planet Japan
* Hakone Hotel Kowakien
Brought to you by J-LIST
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Every wonder what the well-dressed sumo wrestler wears when he finally does put something on?
Many thanks to Francis Turner.
Check out this Doritos bag sent into Japundit by Letters From China.
The characters on the bag read Denki Anma Fukkatsu (Electric Massage Revival).
Denki Anma (electric massage) is a term used to describe what is going on in the illustration — Person A holds Person B’s legs up in the air by the ankles as he steps on Person B’s crotch and moves his foot around very quickly like an electric massager.
What this has to do with Doritos is anybody’s guess.
A Japanese research team is planning to take part in the Dakar rally in a car that runs on tempura cooking oil.
Sponsored by Toyota, the car will the first vehicle totally powered by biodiesel fuel to enter the rally.
[T]he team will need about 10,000 liters (2,600 gallons) of tempura oil, which will be donated by students, the school cafeteria, as well as neighborhood restaurants.
The main drawback of using tempura oil is smell. One researcher said that testing the fuel in the lab gave him heartburn and put him off of tempura for days.
