The family of the late Tsutomu Nagasaka, chairman of the home remodeling group Koizumi, hid about 1 billion yen worth of his assets and evaded inheritance tax in 2001, sources said Monday.
The family of four tried to reduce the tax by diverting part of the chairman's shares in the Tokyo-based firm to an employee shareholding trust when he died in August 2001.
A half year before Nagasaka's death, the family reached an agreement with the trust to divert 600,000 of his 1.04 million shares. Then after his death, the family reported an inheritance of 5.67 billion yen.
The Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau decided their act amounted to tax evasion and ordered the heirs to pay some 860 million yen in taxes.