Salaryman top tax payer.

[dimwit]

It's time for the annual taxpayer list. So who paid the most tax Horie? Son? Tsutsumi? Don't bet on it!

Salaryman tops agency's taxpayer list

The National Tax Administration Agency released its annual list of the nation's top taxpayers for 2004 on Monday, with a salaried worker topping the list for the first time.

The agency released the names, addresses and amounts of income tax declared by individuals paying 10 million yen or more for 2004.

Topping the list was Tatsuro Kiyohara, 46, chief of the operations department of investment advisory firm Tower Investment Management Co., based in Minato Ward, Tokyo.

See full article hereThe Yomiuri Shimbun

So the top taxpayer is a guy who owns an obscure company earned and about 100 million dollars.

I've never understood how the the elite in Japanese Society manage to entirely avoid paying tax. Are the tax officials lax about going after them or are they pulling a Conrad Black and looting the companies they own?

[Buraku]

former political heavyweight, who resigned in disgrace from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, personifies all that is wrong in the world's second-biggest economy. He reluctantly quit the party amid allegations of bid rigging and influence-peddling to direct lucrative Foreign Ministry aid contracts to companies from his constituency.
Suzuki's sordid tale is just one of many to come to light in the past two weeks. Koichi Kato, who made a run for Japan's top job less than two years ago, resigned from the LDP after a former aide was arrested on tax evasion charges. This week, Social Democratic Party lawmaker Kiyomi Tsujimoto admitted to spending a former aide's salary on personal expenses.
Corruption scandals are hardly new in Japanese politics -- 1970s Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka was charged with accepting about US$1.7 million in bribes from Lockheed Corp to help the US airplane maker sell 21 jets to a Japanese airline.


No one's naive enough to believe Japan has a monopoly on corruption -- it's got lots of competition right here in Asia. Yet, as Suzuki's case attests, Tokyo is rich with examples of lawmakers and bureaucrats misusing funds. Look no further than Japan's Foreign Ministry, where bureaucrats used a secret slush fund to wine and dine diplomats, or local governments, where myriad small-town mayors have been charged with bid-rigging offenses.

Things would seem less dire if forces were in place to clean the smear of corruption and cronyism from the LDP. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi certainly hasn't lived up to his campaign promise to "Change the LDP, Change Japan!" Now, as Koizumi approaches the end of his first year in office, it's clear that it's business as usual in Japanese politics.

For all his assertions to the contrary, Koizumi has proven to be an old-style LDP apparatchik. Sure, he wears nicer suits, has better hair and speaks differently than his comrades, but he's cut from the same cloth.

Koizumi's all-talk-no-action act has restored the cloud of gloom and uncertainty hanging over Tokyo.

good info, stealing its citizen' s savings
http://www.tuj.ac.jp/newsite/main/law/lawresources/TUJonline/Tax/taxadmin.html
http://www.transparency.org/working_papers/country/japan_paper.html
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V122/N16/col16basil.16c.html
http://forum.japantoday.com/m_35000/mpage_1/key_/tm.htm
http://www.earthsharing.org.au/date.html

[FG Lurker]

I've never understood how the the elite in Japanese Society manage to entirely avoid paying tax. Are the tax officials lax about going after them or are they pulling a Conrad Black and looting the companies they own?

It is very easy to avoid paying a lot of tax. The trick is that you don't earn a lot of money yourself.

The truly rich keep their assets in corporations, not as personal holdings. Besides sheltering what you "own" from lawsuits (if you do it right), corporations have another huge difference from individuals:

Individual:
1. Earn
2. Pay tax
3. Spend whatever is left

Corporation:
1. Earn
2. Spend like crazy
3. Pay Tax

Want a vacation in Europe? Board meeting!! Want a new car? Tax deductible company purchase. Lease it and the entire amount of the purchase is deductible over the period of the lease. Buy a cottage? Company vacation house -- all expenses tax deductible.

Assuming your tax bracket is 40% (which is where most of these rich dudes are), they save 40% on *everything* they buy through their companies.

[Mulboyne]

So the top taxpayer is a guy who owns an obscure company earned and about 100 million dollars.

Kiyohara doesn't own Tower which is why it made news when he topped the rankings - the first "salaryman" rather than company owner. Tower is very well known in the financial world. It is one of the fastest growing hedge funds with about 2.6 billion under management. Kiyohara is a fund manager. Hedge funds typically charge a management fee of 2% of assets under management and take 20% of the capital gain. So, on the current asset number, Tower earns 52 million dollars in fees]income[/i] tax. You would get a very different picture if you included land taxes, capital gains, inheritance taxes and the like. Most super-wealthy individuals in Japan are asset rich and don't tend to take money out in the form of income (or dividends). In the same way, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates would probably not be the biggest income tax payers in the U.S.

[dimwit]

I guess I never be rich enought to know the innerworkings of hedge funds. I anyways assumed that capital gains were taxed as income but I guess that they are only refering to dividends when they talk investment income on the tax forms.

My gut feeling is that the underground economy is far bigger here than in NA or Europe. I know lots of companies that pay PT workers cash on the barrel and I am damn sure none of this is report to the tax bureau.

If income tax is such a small factor for the very rich why only publish the income tax payed and not capital gains?

[FG Lurker]

If income tax is such a small factor for the very rich why only publish the income tax payed and not capital gains?

Capital gains taxes only take place when you liquidate assets into cash.

I don't know about how it works in Japan (yet), but in the US (and I think Canada), if you sell real estate and then use that money to buy more real estate, you don't have to pay capital gains on the sale. That's a major advantage, especially if you are dealing with rental properties.

I'm sure there are as many or more loopholes in Japan as in the US/Canada... That's how the rich keep making money.

[Mulboyne]

If income tax is such a small factor for the very rich why only publish the income tax payed and not capital gains?

It's not common in most economies to publish any individual taxpayers records so Japan stands out. The numbers are there and you can make of them what you will. They used to be used to show how egalitarian Japanese society was despite the glaring inconsistencies in asset ownership. Even if you recognize their limited value, the numbers do point towards some trends which need to be acknowledged.

[dimwit]

True enough, but I suspect that some (or even most) of the people on the list are there because they find it a good way to advertise their companies.

[FG Lurker]

True enough, but I suspect that some (or even most) of the people on the list are there because they find it a good way to advertise their companies.

No one pays that much income tax by choice... Mostly by bad planning.

[dimwit]

True enough, but I suspect that some (or even most) of the people on the list are there because they find it a good way to advertise their companies.

No one pays that much income tax by choice... Mostly by bad planning.

I don't agree. Think about the advertising potential. If you are selling something, your going to get solid Tv and print coverage plus all the wide shows and the weekly magazines.

[FG Lurker]

True enough, but I suspect that some (or even most) of the people on the list are there because they find it a good way to advertise their companies.

No one pays that much income tax by choice... Mostly by bad planning.

I don't agree. Think about the advertising potential. If you are selling something, your going to get solid Tv and print coverage plus all the wide shows and the weekly magazines.

You could get much better coverage for less money by just paying for it. Especially that guy who got stuck with a US$43million tax bill.

[FG Lurker]

True enough, but I suspect that some (or even most) of the people on the list are there because they find it a good way to advertise their companies.

No one pays that much income tax by choice... Mostly by bad planning.

I don't agree. Think about the advertising potential. If you are selling something, your going to get solid Tv and print coverage plus all the wide shows and the weekly magazines.

You could get much better coverage for less money by just paying for it. Especially that guy who got stuck with a US$43million tax bill.

Hehe, and if you pay for it, it's tax deductible -- thus saving even more tax.

[Mulboyne]

Kiyohara has a long way to go:

Bloomberg: Lampert Is Top-Paid Hedge Fund Manager in 2004 Survey
Edward Lampert, who took control of Kmart Holding Corp. and oversaw its purchase of Sears, Roebuck & Co., was the best-paid hedge fund manager last year, according to a survey in Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine. The 42-year-old chairman of Greenwich, Connecticut-based ESL Investments Inc. earned $1 billion from fees and investments, the magazine said. The average income for the 25 best-paid managers was $251 million, up 21 percent from a year before. "Never before have so few made so much so fast," Institutional Investor said in the report on its Web site. By comparison, the average income for a chief executive of the largest 500 companies in the U.S. was $10 million, it said.

[Mulboyne]

Asahi: Coalition to scrap list of top taxpayers
Igniting a debate over the privacy rights of the filthy rich, the ruling coalition will scrap the annual list of the nation's top individual taxpayers, sources said. The move will be part of tax revisions for next fiscal year. Under the current public notification system, the names and addresses of people who paid more than 10 million yen in income tax for the year are posted at tax offices. The amounts they paid are also listed...more...