My ward tax has gone up

[GomiGirl]

Today nobody should be looking at/relying on/expecting the government to support them in their old age. We should all take personal responsibiliity for our futures. Sure it is nice to get pay rises and bonuses and think of what we can spend the money on now, but we should all be squirreling away some of this money safely for ourselves. I think it is just personally responsible. Sure it is a pain in the butt to look at all of the different options out there and to wade through and decide what is the best investment but it is important.

[Captain Japan]

June's local tax rise perplexing many
Gomiuri

Many company employees will have been surprised to see a sharp increase in the amount of tax deducted at source from their paychecks in June.

The increase was due to a rise in resident taxes paid to prefectural and municipal governments as a result of a transfer at some tax sources from the national government to local governments.

Though an equivalent to the increase was reduced from the amount of income tax that went to the state coffers in January, opposition parties used the rise to attack the government as it occurred just before next month's House of Councillors election.

The administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the ruling parties, who are worried about falling approval ratings caused primarily by problems related to sloppy management of public pension data, urged the public to view the rise as a result of the transfer, and not as a tax hike.

During his speech in Matsuyama on June 18, Democratic Party of Japan Secretary General Yukio Hatoyama said: "I want you to carefully check your wage slips this month. Local resident taxes will have jumped."...more...

[Captain Japan]

Today nobody should be looking at/relying on/expecting the government to support them in their old age. We should all take personal responsibiliity for our futures.

I don't see this as being important since the point is that the law requires employees to pay into a system that has zero benefit for them down the line. Effectively the pension scam is just an elaborate tax.

[FG Lurker]

Got my day job's June payslip today.

City/ward tax is now 38,000yen per month. I have no idea what it will be on bonus months, I prefer not to ponder that too much.

My national tax has gone down however. The total is the same as it was before, just the split is different.

I'm torn about this change. On one hand I like keeping things local as (in theory) cities can spend the money in ways that most benefit the people who are paying it. On the other hand Japanese cities have proven time and again that they are incapable of properly controlling the money they already have. Giving them even more doesn't seem like such a good idea...

[james]

when i go pay it, i can tell these fuckers directly not to waste it on another f'ing pyramid..

[ttjereth]

That's not too much different from social security back home then.

I'll have to look into the 25 year thing, wasn't mentioned when I last asked about it, but since I'll be spending some time at the ward office next week anyway...

My only real concern with nenkin is that I hope it is still around by the time I am able to collect:confused:

Oddly enough I just had a job translating Nenkin-related documents into Japanese (kind of paying my own salary?).

For the U.S. at least, the 25 year thing doesn't matter, if you want to collect nenkin here, or social security in the U.S., you can file to have the TOTAL number of years paid into both systems used as your total for whichever system you choose to file with. e.g. if you paid into nenkin for 10 years and into SS for 15, you can still collect nenkin and it counts as having paid into the system for 25 years.

Not sure whether you would make out better collecting nenkin or SS though? Nenkin doesn't seem to pay out all that much money, so I'm kind of leaning towards U.S. social security being the better bet for supplemental income in old age.

[Charles]

I don't see this as being important since the point is that the law requires employees to pay into a system that has zero benefit for them down the line.

This is a common anti-tax argument. For example, I hear it from people who don't want to pay for public schools since their kids are already adults.

[Kuang_Grade]

This is a common anti-tax argument. For example, I hear it from people who don't want to pay for public schools since their kids are already adults.

That depends if you assume its "normal" that almost everyone should be paying cash to one smaller subset of the group. With education, one can make the argument that there is some societal benefits (no education means few to zero long term employment opportunities which means they're just going to become criminals...so do you want to spend money on schools or cops and jails, or possibly the Brazilian solution of death squads) although in a general sense the payback is not necessarily localized since people can move out the community after they are educated.

The benefits for a social security type retirement plan are less clear. Old folks don't necessarily pose much societal threat nor do investments in their well being necessarily produce overall societal benefits.....i.e., is spending X to keeping old geezer Z around and healthy going to produce more income and productive jobs for society as whole? Sure you get some healthcare jobs out of it, but those jobs are ultimately financed by the state or the public at large. If that same cash was invested in a children at a young age, the payoffs for society would be significantly greater if merely for the fact the payback period will be decades long vs. years for old folks.

I don't expect Society Security to be there when I retire (there will be a program when I retire but you'll need to live past 90 years old to collect from it) so as it is, barring some form of disability afflicting me in the near term, the taxes collect for it are just a form a federal taxes I'll never benefit from...barring some super flu epidemic coming in and wiping out 80% of the 55+ folks.

[Mulboyne]

TsukuBlog had details of the ward tax increase last month. There's also a link there to a blog by Nagamine Accounting Office which seems to put up occasional details of tax changes in both English and Japanese.

Tsukuba sent round this notification in English (PDF) to foreign residents in their area.

[Big Booger]

What's the penalty for never paying?

[FG Lurker]

What's the penalty for never paying?

Not sure about ward tax, but for income tax they charge you the full tax amount plus a penalty of about the same amount. In other words you get to pay double.

[Big Booger]

My wife looked it up and found that the local government will come to your domicile and take your belongings. They then proceed to sell said belongings on yahoo auctions until your taxes have been paid. They will take any and all belongings including your car.

As well as charge you the hefty penalties for non-payment. What a load of shit. Looks like I'll be paying this year and then shafting them next year when I return to the good ol U.S. of A.

[Greji]

My wife looked it up and found that the local government will come to your domicile and take your belongings. They then proceed to sell said belongings on yahoo auctions until your taxes have been paid. They will take any and all belongings including your car.

You ain't justa woofing there Boog! Have you ever looked at any of the tax auctions? Damn, they got everything except false teeth and I suppose if you looked long enough, you could find them!