If an investor or a financial institution has questions regarding how a new financial product will fare in terms of taxation, it can prepare a questionnaire for the NTA, which will respond with information on tax categorization.
Aided by this new information, the investor or financial institution can roughly estimate how much tax will be assessed on the new financial product both now and in the future, and whether or not it is financially beneficial to invest in it.
At present, the tax system in Japan is mainly suited to handling conventional tax categorizations but ill-suited for dealing with highly complicated and structured financing deals, such as airplane leasing and film financing.