Japan looks to households to boost demand
TOKYO: Japan's ruling party will try to spur economic growth by reducing
inheritance taxes and giving workers more free time, the party's top policy
maker was quoted Sunday as saying.
Shizuka Kamei said the Liberal Democratic Party wants to raise the amount of
inheritance money excluded from taxation from 600,000 yen ($5,673) to 10
million yen ($94,553), according to Kyodo News agency.
Kamei also pledged to give company employees more holidays so they will have
more time to spend money, Kyodo said. The official was speaking in an
interview on Fuji TV.
The report did not say how Kamei planned to get companies to give more
vacation time to employees, and LDP officials could not be reached for
comment at their headquarters on Sunday.
Changes to the tax system or the government-designated national holidays
would have to be approved by Parliament, in which the LDP has a majority.
The Japanese government in recent years has borrowed a record amount of
money for spending programs designed to pull the nation's economy out of its
worst slump in decades.
Such spending has put Japan among the world's most indebted nations,
prompting the government to look for other ways to stimulate economic
growth.
Kamei reasoned that parents would be able to transfer more money to their
children if a larger portion of their wealth is tax-exempt, Kyodo said.
Less time at work, meanwhile, would give Japanese more time to spend some of
the 1.3 quadrillion yen ($12.3 trillion) locked up in savings accounts,
Kamei reportedly said.
Unlike many public holidays in the United States, Japan's 14 annual national
holidays do not necessarily fall adjacent to weekends.
But this year, the government moved two holidays next to weekends to allow
people to take long vacations in hopes they would spend more money on
travel.
"New domestic demand cannot be created if the conventional life pattern and
sense of life remain unchanged," Kyodo quoted Kamei as saying. "Economic
structural reform is life-structure reform." (AP)
For reprint rights: Times Syndication Service
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