
Japan's tax laws get in way of more women working full time - Ultramanoid
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/03/05/national/japans-tax-laws-get-way-women-working-full-time/
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stakhanov
That's not just true of Japan it's true of pretty much any income tax system:
Say you have a two person household consisting of person A and person B.

First configuration: Person A engages in wealth creation by running the
household, raising the children, etc. etc. That wealth-creation is tax-free
since it's never paid for in monetary terms. Whatever time is left over can be
spent doing jobs that don't demand fulltime status. Those jobs don't pay as
much on an hourly basis, but that income will be very tax efficient as the
total sum of money will be lower and therefore a larger proportion of it will
end up in the lower income-tax bands. This frees up person B to do a fulltime
job, maximizing income (albeit earned in a less tax-efficient way).

Second configuration: Both person A and person B do a fulltime job, maximizing
income. Now they both pay a lot of taxes, since the both earn a lot of money.
They use some of the money left over after taxes to pay for a nanny,
housekeeper, etc.

In order for first and second configuration to "break even" the hourly rate
for person A under the second configuration would have to be A LOT more than
under the first configuration to make up for the added inefficiency in tax.

My contention would be: It's pretty rare for both person A and person B to be
able to earn so much under the second configuration so as to break even with
the first configuration (as measured by hosehold disposable income, i.e. after
taxes and everything).

~~~
intopieces
>My contention would be: It's pretty rare for both person A and person B to be
able to earn so much under the second configuration so as to break even with
the first configuration (as measured by hosehold disposable income, i.e. after
taxes and everything).

This depends on your timescale. If you look at the tax returns of years 0-5,
your contention will look spot on. If you compare the tax returns of two
couples -- with double income in all years vs single income for years 0-5, you
may find that in the long run, given the sacrifice involved in taking a career
break for 5 years, it is in the favor of the couple to shell out in big in
those 5 years.

~~~
larrik
That's only one kid, though. If you have 3 or 4 kids, the difference isn't
close anymore.

~~~
intopieces
Having 3 or 4 kids in Japan is exceedingly rare; the average family size is
2.4 [0]

[0][https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=083db34f40f94a55a26...](https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=083db34f40f94a55a266ac114c7fddc9)

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eska
I can't help but feel like this is a strong misinterpretation of the
circumstances.

The author tries really hard to make this a woman's issue, but as far as I
know the law doesn't lay out different rules for women specifically, just the
less-earning spouses that take care of the children, so the same problems
exist for husbands that stay at home. However, women universally tend to not
marry "down" when it comes to finances, education, etc., while men do. They
also tend to find men without a career to be unambitious, which is generally
considered to be an unattractive trait in men for romantic purposes. This is
true for poor countries rife with sexism, as well as for rich countries that
treat women and men equally. (All of this has been covered by extensive
sutdies) In Japan in particular young women tend to have high expectations of
men, because their parents and grandparents had no financial issues during the
economic bubble and their mothers and grandmothers did not have to work at all
or much. Many Japanese women can't wait to marry in order to start a family
and stop working; it's their life goal and they only consider their career to
be temporary from the start. This even true for most women who graduate from
elite universities in Japan (I saw a study about Tokyo university graduates
mentioning this). So that's why in practice we're talking about mostly women
here and I wouldn't blame men for that.

The argument about the time spent on housework also sounds rather weird and
insignificant to me, because it mentions a significant gap between men and
women, but also mentions that Japanese spend less time on housework in
general. 263mins = 4h23m a week is a number that I pull off without trouble as
a single man working full-time without the least bit of help from a spouse.
The article also doesn't mention whether this number is limited to families
with children or the whole population.

The part about bento boxes is just a meme. Women are not considered to be bad
mothers if they don't create bento boxes that look like Pikachu and friends.

There are legitimate issues for women working in Japan, some of which we have
in other countries, some we don't, but I don't see any of them in this
article. All I see is "less-earning spouses (usually women) get too many
benefits, that's why the alternative of working isn't attractive enough". And
instead of complaining about beautiful bento boxes, the author should draw
attention to serious issues like the incredible lack of kindergarden spots and
the like.

~~~
mikekchar
Just to agree with you on the bentou boxes. I worked in a high school for 5
years and often ate lunch with the students. Never once did I see an overly
cute benou box :-) My wife makes my bentou box, but at that time I made hers.
It takes about 20 minutes to make in the morning, but you have to be
organised. Japanese people also tend to have a large, cooked morning meal
(which my wife now makes, but when I was working at the school I made for
her). For me, I'd often be cooking for about an hour every morning (including
both breakfast and lunch), which meant getting up at about 6. Japanese people
bathe at night, which frees up a bit of time.

I don't want to understate the difficulty that women have in the workplace in
Japan. The breakfast and lunch are manageable, but then you have to do laundry
(and if you have school kids, it's a _big_ job in Japan). People hang their
laundry outside, so it's a problem if you aren't there to get it if it rains.
You have to be back in time to cook dinner for your kids, but you have
responsibilities to stay late at work most days, etc, etc. Some of my female
colleagues barely slept and it just wasn't healthy.

Distributing the workload is not so hard, but it needs a cultural shift. It's
slowly happening though. You may note that my wife cooks for me now and wonder
why... I liked doing breakfast and lunch, but I think my wife prefers doing it
herself (my bentous aren't very good, I'll admit). I suspect (but don't know)
that she also feels better, as a woman, if she does that job. That's a strange
idea in western culture, but perhaps it will sound more understandable if I
say that I feel better, as a man, if I make a salary. Stupid and arbitrary,
but culture is like that sometimes. It's hard to change and you need to go
slowly.

~~~
eska
Thank you for your input, mikekchar. Even if anecdotal, it mirrors my
experiences and what I hear from Japanese acquaintances as well. I agree that
the cultural shift might just take more time, but is already happening. I see
parallels to earlier developments in the west.

------
mikekchar
Just for people who are new to the Japan Times, I should point out that this
article is somehow in the "News" section, not the "Opinion" sections. How they
can get away with saying, "If the government really wants to encourage women
to work more, it should revoke the tax deduction framework." in a "news" piece
without it being a quote, I have no idea, but this is absolutely typical of
the Japan Times.

I should also point out that the piece is full of misleading information used
to bolster their argument. For example:

"Prior to 2018, a person who made no more than ¥1.03 million a year in income
did not have to pay income tax and could be claimed as a dependent on their
spouse’s tax return, meaning a deduction of ¥380,000."

This is completely dependent upon the spouse's salary. ¥1.03 million is about
$10K, just in case you aren't familiar with the currency. A deduction of
¥380,000 is 38% -- which implies that the marginal tax rate of the spouse is
%38 percent. This would be a _huge_ salary for the spouse in Japanese terms.

It's important to understand that personal income tax in Japan is very low.
However, you have to pay a fixed 7% for pension and health coverage and
another 5-10% for city and prefectural tax (depending on where you live).
There are no deductions on pension, city and prefectural tax. Typically if you
are paying an overall 30-35% tax rate, your personal income tax rate is only
somewhere around 15-20%.

Have a look here and scroll down to the personal tax rates:
[https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2206.html](https://www.japan-
guide.com/e/e2206.html) A 40% marginal tax rate starts at 18 million yen, or
$180K. Yes, not so high in SV, but I don't know _anyone_ where I live that
makes this much as a salary.

A more typical marginal tax rate is 15 or 20%.

Like I said, this is typical for Japan Times "news" stories unfortunately. I
feel odd saying this because while the piece is terrible, I actually agree
with the idea of reducing dependent deductions and the need for more Japanese
women to get positions in permanent positions in Japan.

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deogeo
This article reads like a cruel joke. In a country with some of the longest
working hours in the world, where people working themselves to death is a
serious issue, where the birth rate is crashing, it's calling for even _more_
work? A horrible perversion of feminism, that makes as much sense as calling
for more women to be made homeless to bring them to parity with men.

Anything is justified to "stimulate the economy" I guess.

~~~
mantas
Anything has to go through economical system to raise GDP!

Let's discourage people from cooking at home, having guests at home, spending
time in public parks and forests or at home with their kids...

GDP is happiness.

/s just in case

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alkibiades
why is the goal for women to work full time as if that in itself is some
societal good? i want to live in a society where people don’t have to work
full time

~~~
Broken_Hippo
I, too, want to live in such a society. That said, I also don't want to live
in a society where I have to stay home and do housework. I'd rather live in a
society where a couple shares the household burdens, including housework,
childcare, and outside work to pay bills - or have the choice to be
independent of the other sex or have the choice to work outside the home and
the man stays home to do that work.

In that world, both sexes have to work. In our current times, folks have to
work full time (whatever full time is). 40 hours a week it is until we can get
that norm reduced, but that is a different issue entirely.

... even though it boggles the mind. You'd think if everyone works we could
all work less. But reality seems to say otherwise right now.

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lgleason
None of this has anything to do with helping people. Instead it is about big
soul less companies looking for more ways to get cheap labor. Things like
family etc. are a distraction from that goal.

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throwaway2w09
I would like to know when, if ever, we will be able to have a conversation on
HN about whether women working (i.e. working outside rather than raising a
family) is an absolute unquestionable good thing. Surely we can't complain
about falling birth rates at the same time that we complain about we don't
have enough women working? Japan particularly wants to avoid the elephant in
the room.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Who's complaining about falling birth rates? The planet is overpopulated,
fewer humans can only be a good thing.

~~~
fiblye
Not a day goes by without western media conglomerates publishing an article
about how the Japanese are going extinct and need mass immigration now.

I see some local news talking about some minor labor shortages with
convenience stores and whatnot, but opening up BBC or CNN you'd think Japan is
on the brink of absolute collapse due to being underpopulated with only 120
million people on a tiny, mountainous, barely arable archipelago.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
_" Not a day goes by without western media conglomerates publishing an article
about how the Japanese are going extinct and need mass immigration now._"

This isn't the cause of two-income households because Japan is quite broadly
one-income households...? This is almost entirely irrelevant to two-income
household discussion. (I'm not decided personally how I feel about it, merely
pointing out this specific comment is making 0 sense to me)

~~~
swebs
The parent comment asked, "Who's complaining about falling birth rates?" and
he answered that specific question.

