Japanese Government Seeks to Collect More Taxes From Small Firms

A government tax panel has proposed more tax should be collected from small and midsize companies in Japan to fund the corporate tax cut Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has promised to implement, according to a reform plan unveiled Friday.

If Abe’s government reforms the corporate tax system as the Tax Commission requested, criticism is likely to grow that it will give preferential treatment to big firms while increasing burdens on smaller companies, some of which have experienced low profitability, analysts said.

In the plan, the commission — an advisory panel to Abe — asked the government to review tax breaks for small and midsize firms, and to expand the targeting of corporate income tax based on “external standards,” such as the number of employees, capital and other ways of measuring the scale of operations.

The size-based tax has been eyed as one way to help stabilize tax revenues as it is imposed on both profitable and unprofitable companies, regardless of economic fluctuations. Only around 30 percent of Japanese firms pay corporate tax now, with the rest exempt due to poor business performance.

via Mainichi

Content is for general information purposes only. It is not investment advice or a solution to buy or sell securities. Opinions are the authors; not necessarily that of OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc. or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers or directors. If you would like to reproduce or redistribute any of the content found on MarketPulse, an award winning forex, commodities and global indices analysis and news site service produced by OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc., please access the RSS feed or contact us at info@marketpulse.com. Visit https://www.marketpulse.com/ to find out more about the beat of the global markets. © 2023 OANDA Business Information & Services Inc.

Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza