The Tax Commission recommended Thursday that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi raise both income and residential taxes in fiscal 2005 in what would be the first significant tax increases in six years.
With the economy stable, the tax panel and the Finance Ministry are both longing to raise taxes to curb the national debt.
The national debt is climbing rapidly. When comparing the total financial assets of the government against the total central and local government debt, the nation's net public debt stands at 85.2 percent of gross domestic product, according to a September estimate by the International Monetary Fund.
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