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Oct. 1 will mark a major turning point in Japan’s consumption tax rate with the start of an invoice system.
Small businesses and freelance workers fret that they may face the prospect of paying more in tax. Some fear they will be forced to suspend business transactions if they do not issue the invoices.
A group representing small businesses presented an aide to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida with a petition containing 540,000 signatures asking that the start of the invoice system be delayed or suspended altogether.
Businesses or individuals with annual sales under 10 million yen ($67,000) are exempted from paying consumption tax. Such businesses will have to register as a consumption tax-paying entity in order to issue invoices. But that will mean they will have to pay the consumption tax amount they receive from customers to the government.
If such small businesses decide not to register, they will continue to be spared the consumption tax payment obligation, but their customers would face a greater tax burden because they would not be able to write off the consumption tax amount they paid to the small business. Larger businesses might exert pressure on small businesses to cut the price of transactions to match what would have been paid back in consumption tax.
The invoice system is intended to deal with the two consumption tax rates of eight and 10 percent. The invoice would record the amount of consumption tax paid for each transaction.
The new invoice system will affect a wide range of workers from freelancers to taxi drivers who work independently and not for a taxi company.
The vast majority of independent taxi drivers make less than 10 million yen a year, but if they register to be able to issue invoices, their consumption tax burden would increase by 80,000 yen a year if their annual sales come to 4 million yen, according to one calculation by a labor union of independent taxi drivers.
One union official said that might lead some older taxi drivers to call it quits.
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