Japan will temporarily slash consumption tax on food from 8% to 1% starting next April, the prime minister said today, as her administration seeks to tackle rising inflation.<\/p>\n
It will be the first such reduction since the tax was introduced in 1989, and the rate will return to 8% after two years, Sanae Takaichi told reporters.<\/p>\n
The move aims to ease cost-of-living pressures in the world’s fourth-largest economy, which have been rising due to the war in the Middle East and a weak yen.<\/p>\n
But it comes despite worries over Japan’s colossal debts, which are more than twice the size of its gross domestic product – the highest ratio among advanced economies.<\/p>\n
From April, Japan will implement “the lowering of our sales tax on food and beverages to one percent for two years”, Takaichi said.<\/p>\n
The current rate will then be reinstated in 2029 to coincide with the introduction of more “meticulous subsidies” targeting lower-income workers burdened by rising social insurance premiums, she said.<\/p>\n
The two year cut is estimated to cost 10 trillion yen ($61 billion) in lost tax revenues, according to media reports.<\/p>\n
Takaichi pledged in February to eliminate the sales tax on food and beverages, a key part of her manifesto that helped her win a resounding victory in lower house elections.<\/p>\n
She said today that the government would explore steps like reassessing other tax relief measures and subsidy programmes to make up for the lost revenues.<\/p>\n
Her administration would “aim to secure funding without relying on special government bonds, to gain market confidence”, she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japan will temporarily slash consumption tax on food from 8% to 1% starting next April, the prime minister…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60],"class_list":["post-575845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}