From: fester@island.COM (Mike Fester)
Subject: Re: Try it again - RE: Please give me your opinions...
Organization: /usr/local/rn/organization
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 16:40:57 GMT

In article <1992Nov17.093006.6389@u.washington.edu> tvp@gibdo.engr.washington.edu writes:
>In article <1992Nov16.154743.1204@island.COM> fester@island.COM (Mike Fester) writes:
>>
>>In GENERAL, starting salaries in Japan are lower, and certainly more similar
>>across-the-board (ie, staring bankers make the same as starting engineers who
>>make the same as starting account reps, etc). There are several things that
>>work to the advantage of a salary in Japan:
>>
>>2) Japanese taxes are much lower here. My income at my first job was
>>   taxed at 10% (I was a full shain). My second job (keiyakusha), my
>>   income was withheld at 20%, but after my deductions, I paid at 10%.
>>   Saved several thousand $$ that way. Note: my current job in the US
>>   pays more than my job as a shain, but less than my work as a
>>   keiyakusha. Also note that the sales tax in Japan is 3% everywhere,
>>   and local taxes run about $1000 a year.

Couple follow-ups to the follow-ups.

>1. Sales tax in Japan is 3% but what the Japanese gov't hides is that
>   this tax is applied at every market layer. I.e. the maker charges
>   the wholesaler 3%, the wholesaler charges the retailer 3%, the
>   retailer charges the customer ("end user") 3%. The full cost of
>   this tax is of course being passed along to the consumer and the
>   net effect is a tax closer to 8-9% on average. (The shouhizei was
>   intentionally set up this way, to appear lower to consumers than it
>   actually is.) Plus it applies to food, rent, utilities... Absolutely
>   everything. It is *not* a minor tax by any stretch of the
>   imagination when you consider the full implications of how it's
>   implemented.

I understand this, but I was in Japan at the time of the implementation. It
was rather strange in that prices a) went up by the 3% exactly as you would
expect or b) prices did not change at all! In the latter case, what happened
wa that the RETAIL price was dropped to the point that the 3% tax brought the
product back up to the original price. (Kind of odd, I thought). Also, many of
the "mom-and-pop" stores were exempt from charging the sales tax, the stated
theory being that they couldn't afford to lower their prices to absorb the 
tax. Now, quite a few of those M&P shops DID charge sales tax, but I am fully
certain they turned that extra 3% over to the government like good citizens :-)

>2. Local taxes are completely inconsistent. Some localities have very,
>   very high juuminzei. (Like Kanagawa-ken where I lived the last year
>   I was in Japan.) On the other hand, some localities have relatively
>   low rates. So it's not possible to make a blanket statement that
>   it's a reasonable tax. Also, it's tied to your salary for the
>   previous tax year, so it's kind of like an income tax. It's also
>   tied to the size/quality of place you live in, so if you live in a
>   recently-built, decent-sized place with say five rooms and happened
>   to earn good money the year before (say 8 million+ yen) this can
>   easily get up to 4,000 to 5,000 dollars.  Again this is not always
>   a minor tax; there are a variety of factors that can make it much
>   higher than even your income tax.

I thought I had stated that the local tax varied, though I had no idea it varied
so widely. My apologies for the omission. Perhaps we ought to form a 'database'
of taxes. When I lived in Mitaka-shi, I payed about $1,000 on an income of
Y7 million, new apartment, 3 room. In Koganei-shi, I payed about the same,
for an income of Y8 million, new apartment, 5 rooms. 

The take-home lesson from that would appear to be: DON'T LIVE IN KANEGAWA!

Mike
-- 
Disclaimer - I'm only doing what the little voices tell me to do. 
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan