The government and the Democratic Party of Japan have finalized their temporary tax hike plan and will ask the public to cough up ¥11.2 trillion to help reconstruct the disaster-hit Tohoku region, but experts Wednesday were quick to point out flaws in the hastily prepared blueprint.
The plan, which will cover approximately 10 years, will raise the income tax by 4 percent beginning in January 2013, will raise the cost of tobacco by ¥2 per cigarette starting in October 2012, add ¥500 to the residential tax from June 2014 and reduce the size of the corporate tax cut scheduled for next April.
"It's obvious that the government needs financial resources for reconstruction and that a tax hike is inevitable," Kazuhiro Yoshii, managing director of the legal and tax research unit at Daiwa Institute of Research, told The Japan Times.