The percentage of companies that showed a profit on their tax returns stood at 31.1 percent for the business year to June 30, up 0.4 percentage point from the previous year for the first increase in 10 years, the National Tax Agency said Tuesday.
The total amount of income declared by 2,701,000 out of about 2,885,000 companies in Japan also rose, climbing 4.6 trillion yen to about 42.69 trillion yen, apparently reflecting temporary strong business performances by companies in the information technology industry, it said.
The total amount of taxes collected from these companies jumped 9.8 percent to about 11.59 trillion yen, the agency said in a report.
The agency inspected about 143,000 firms suspected of irregularities in their tax returns. Of these, 104,000 were found to have failed to declare a total of 1.45 trillion yen in income, down 2.9 percent from the previous year.
Of the amount, the agency found 383 billion yen was apparently concealed or window-dressed by companies, down 167.7 billion yen over the previous year.
Bars or other drinking and entertainment establishments were the top industry found to have irregularities when filing tax returns, accounting for 47.3 percent, followed by pachinko parlors at 39.5 percent and book or magazine sellers at 31.9 percent, the agency said.
The agency also inspected 1,714 out of 24,488 nonprofit organizations, including religious groups and educational foundations, which receive favorable tax treatment. They declared income from their profit-generating operations.
It found 763 of these entities failed to declare a total of 15.9 billion yen in income for the year that ended on June 30, up 1.1 billion yen from the preceding year.
The average amount of income concealed by each group totaled about 16.13 million yen, it said.