Tax time is coming up, so I thought I’d talk about what taxes are like in Japan. As with people in other countries, residents of Japan (including me) pay income taxes, including a specific Tohoku Reconstruction Tax to help pay for the post-tsunami recovery. One of the themes of Japan is that they usually take their cues from the U.S., and as a result the tax system is quite similar to America’s, with income tax rates from 23% to 45%. While most features of the tax codes are similar, there are some cultural differences. Since automobiles are important to the Japanese economy, companies can buy them pretty much without limitation as tax write-offs, and the president of the original JAST, my old business partner, had a nice collection of high-end BMWs purchased to reduce his taxes. Unlike Americans, Japanese people save “too much,” so programs like 401(k) accounts are rare here. One long-term concern everyone has is, what will happen to taxes as the country’s population falls. Next year Japan is scheduled to bump its consumption tax (like VAT) from the current 8% up to 10%. Hopefully other taxes won’t go up too quickly.
After living in Japan for 25 years and running J-List for almost 20, I’m as fluent in Japanese as I need to be. I interact with all our staff, accompany the buyers to product shows where we look for kawaii bento and kitchen products for the site, and even work with contracts in Japanese regularly. (They’re not that difficult because the language used them is always clear, so once you’ve read one, you’ve read them all.) Still, there are always rough patches in language. When my son was born, I realized I lacked a basic linguistic skill most of us take for granted, how to talk to babies (or prepare one for a bath). One odd thing about Japanese is that, thanks to the rise in computers and cell phones, almost no one writes it longhand, and so it’s easy to forget how to write kanji, though reading ability is maintained. For this reason, I recommend anyone studying Japanese to not stress about writing and only focus on reading instead.
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