[HN Gopher] Japan's Hometown Tax (2018)
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Japan's Hometown Tax (2018)
Author : harporoeder
Score : 288 points
Date : 2022-04-25 09:48 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.kalzumeus.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.kalzumeus.com)
| [deleted]
| incomingpain wrote:
| Japan is writing the economic textbooks. Tremendous government
| debt, nearly 100% total tax burden. Quantitative easing will tend
| to target entities in say Tokyo. It creates an imbalance that
| will only get worse as people move to Tokyo to get some of that
| QE. Negative interest rates, they basically are giving away free
| money so that the economy doesn't blow up in a deflationary death
| spiral. This imbalance to then be fixed comes in form of another
| tax? The hometown tax?
|
| Worse yet, the government debt to gdp is still increasing. Debt
| still going up and up because they havent balanced the budget
| since the early 90s.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades
|
| Japan has lost 3 decades so far because of high taxes and high
| debt. You can't default on the debt, it's your own people who own
| the debt. Defaulting would mean your elderly have to go back to
| work. Yet it's worse... Japan has a major silver crime issue and
| well unspoken probable slave labour problem.
|
| The fix for Japan is so simple yet for 30 years nobody has been
| willing to do it.
| [deleted]
| ascar wrote:
| > nearly 100% total tax burden.
|
| What kind of number is this? The debt to GDP is actually more
| than 200% and you will find the US also above 100%. So yes
| Japan has a big debt problem, but what metric are you using?
|
| > Yet it's worse... Japan has a major silver crime issue and
| well unspoken probable slave labour problem.
|
| Do you have any source for that? I don't know about silver
| crime, but the globalslaveryindex ranks Japan as literally the
| lowest country (167/167 [1]), 4 times better than the US and
| more than 6 times better than a few European countries I looked
| up like Germany, Austria, France or UK.
|
| > The fix for Japan is so simple yet for 30 years nobody has
| been willing to do it.
|
| If it's so easy, why don't you at least enlighten us instead of
| just stating it's easy?
|
| [1] https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/data/country-
| data/ja...
| incomingpain wrote:
| >What kind of number is this? The debt to GDP is actually
| more than 200% and you will find the US also above 100%. So
| yes Japan has a big debt problem, but what metric are you
| using?
|
| Governments like to split up taxes and tax different things.
| Middle east generally has no personal income tax or even a
| corporate tax. Yet you can't say the middle east has no
| taxes.
|
| You have to analyze 'total tax burden' but you also can't
| allow even more tricks like progressive taxes making it
| apples/oranges.
|
| Japan has one of the highest personal taxes in the world at
| 55%. You work for the government 6 months of the year.
|
| When you analyze total tax burden properly. There's only a
| few countries in the world whose taxes are near 100%.
| Basically Japanese people work for the government the entire
| year and don't realize it. The government sure doesn't
| provide everything for them to live.
|
| >Do you have any source for that? I don't know about silver
| crime,
|
| Something like this:
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/20/poverty-
| ageing-j...
|
| Basically in population declines or situations like world war
| 2 countries are currently in or soon to be in. Effectively
| elderly retirees are forced to go back to work. They let
| their skills expire. They take an ego hit being forced to
| work a mcjob. So they steal instead. This wasn't even
| marginally the problem it will be. It's something that's set
| it stone.
|
| >but the globalslaveryindex ranks Japan as literally the
| lowest country (167/167 [1]), 4 times better than the US and
| more than 6 times better than a few European countries I
| looked up like Germany, Austria, France or UK.
|
| That's literally impossible. Answer me 2 things that will
| tell me if it's the lowest slavery in the world.
|
| 1. What is the criminal conviction rate in Japan?
|
| 2. Is there penal labour in Japan?
|
| >If it's so easy, why don't you at least enlighten us instead
| of just stating it's easy?
|
| Well I touched on it. total tax burden being at 100% means
| you cant raise taxes.
|
| Balancing the budget is step #1. Figure out all the positive
| rights that need reducing or cancelling. End abenomics asap.
| Balanced budget amendment to the constitution.
|
| Massively increase immigration in order to dilute tax cost or
| debt/capita. Not sure how that'll work but probably also a
| later disaster for japan. 1 problem at a time.
|
| Probably need to build a free trade zone. Massive increase in
| tourism needed. Probably will need a massive amount of
| deregulation that will blow your mind.
|
| Now you have to deal with the consequences of the above
| options. They aren't good. Probably going to be ~25%
| unemployment. Probably about 4% poverty. GDP contraction of
| -5%/year for several years. Depression level disaster to be
| sure.
|
| Yet this depression is far less painful than Japan's current
| path.
| hedora wrote:
| Here's a nifty sortable table of tax revenue as percentage
| of GDP:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_reve
| n...
|
| Japan's is 38.4%. Eyeballing their position in the table
| suggests they're 66th percentile. (The US is at 38.1%;
| Germany is Europe's economic powerhouse, and is at 43.9%)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > When you analyze total tax burden properly. There's only
| a few countries in the world whose taxes are near 100%.
|
| Define "properly", paying particular attention to
| explaining why the standard "revenue/GDP" method is wrong,
| and show your supporting data for Japan being near 100%.
| iso1210 wrote:
| > total tax burden being at 100% means you cant raise
| taxes.
|
| You still haven't explained what this means. The Japanese
| tax to GDP ratio is 31%, below the OECD average
|
| https://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/revenue-statistics-
| japan...
|
| Japan spends 38% of its GDP, about the same as the US does.
|
| To balance the budget the government would thus have to
| take 38% of GDP. That would put it in the same range as
| Germany, Norway, Netherlands, and way below Italy, Sweden,
| Denmark, France,
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Full disclosure: I am a londoner and this is basically how our
| tax system works except without any of the optionality.
|
| I am not at all convinced that towns have a claim to the tax
| revenue of people who don't use it's services. The fact regions
| can force this onto Tokyo etc is a failure of democracy, not a
| success. We're living in a time when Cities work, and bigger
| cities work better than smaller ones. They're cheaper, greener,
| have better social outcomes, provide more opportunities etc. And
| the response is to try to starve them of revenue to maintain some
| strange tradition life of worse health, poorer people, less
| equality and more pollution.
|
| /rant
| numpad0 wrote:
| It's insanely corrupt. Up to 40% of your taxable income can be
| paid as Furusato nozei, and you get kickback in the form of a
| "thank you gift"(30% value).
|
| The parts about hometowns are almost irrelevant, as each
| donations are one time transactions.
|
| If this isn't scheme of a fraud I don't know what is one.
| LukeShu wrote:
| > Up to 40% of your taxable income can be paid as Furusato
| nozei
|
| No, 4% of your taxable income. There's a 10% residence tax on
| your taxable income, and 40% _of that 10%_ can be paid as
| Furusato Nouzei.
| rocqua wrote:
| How is this how the UK tax system works?
|
| Do you simply mean that the counties get most of their income,
| not from local tax but from national tax? This then counts as
| 'stealing from the city' because most of the national income is
| created by the city?
| imtringued wrote:
| I think this is amusing because a lot of those cities are
| stealing jobs so it is only fair for them to pay.
| settrans wrote:
| I never understood this attitude (assuming it's serious).
| If a job is created in a city that wouldn't exist in the
| country, where is the stealing? To me this sounds like the
| city is creating value _ex nihilo_, and the "payment" here
| is an orthogonal, collectivist redistribution.
| rayiner wrote:
| There is a time skew between use of government services and
| when you pay back with taxes. Why shouldn't a city that paid to
| educate a kid from age 5 to 18 not receive some of the tax
| revenue when that kid uses that education to get a job in
| Tokyo?
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > except without any of the optionality
|
| Or the reciprocal gifts, or ....
|
| I'm not entirely sure it is "basically how" the London/UK tax
| system works ? Perhaps you could elaborate.
|
| Local government is ultimately funded by central government,
| which is (as we've seen from the present UK government) subject
| to political whims as to who gets what and how much (Tories
| favouring Tory seats/councils).
|
| I suspect you might have Council Tax in mind, but I'm not
| entirely convinced that is "basically the same thing" either.
| stdbrouw wrote:
| The purpose of the hometown tax is wealth transfer to less
| populated, poorer regions. In that sense, the reciprocal
| gifts etc. are just a funny implementation detail.
| jonwachob91 wrote:
| People in cities still need rural towns for farming and related
| agriculture production. Maybe in 20 or 50 years most farming
| will be automated, but until then lets not lose sight that big
| cities are dependent on those rural towns with "strange
| tradition life of worse health, poorer people, less equality
| and more pollution"
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| Vertical farming and recirculating aquaculture could
| revolutionize food production in wealthy nations. Remote work
| and high housing costs could slow the urbanization trends
| somewhat.
| jonwachob91 wrote:
| My understanding of vertical farming is that the only thing
| they've succeeded in growing in leafy greens.
| imtringued wrote:
| Vertical farming requires nuclear fusion. What's your
| schedule for that?
|
| Seriously, why exactly are we throwing away free solar
| resources only to have to generate them through some other
| method that is much harder?
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Everyone needs everyone else for the goods and services they
| provide. We pay farmers for the food they grown when they buy
| it. We pay them again with farm subsidies. Do we really need
| to pay a third time with town subsidies?
| modo_mario wrote:
| As far as I know here in Belgium most of the factory work
| also happens far from the big cities.
|
| >We pay farmers for the food they grown when they buy it.
| We pay them again with farm subsidies. Do we really need to
| pay a third time with town subsidies?
|
| Not allowing them to be squeezed so much by oversized
| supermarketchains and the like would probably do more
| causi wrote:
| Did you miss this part?
|
| _To the extent that taxpayers donate to their hometowns, Tokyo
| no longer freerides on the substantial public expenditures
| required to raise and educate internal migrants._
|
| The cost to raise a child to adulthood in Japan is around
| $300,000. That's quite significant.
| jefftk wrote:
| Your $300k includes costs paid by the parents, though, but in
| this case we only care about government costs.
| causi wrote:
| _but in this case we only care about government costs_
|
| Why? Raising a child is a six-figure investment of money
| that doesn't go somewhere else. Every expenditure that
| doesn't immediately go back into the local economy like
| food is wasted when a person leaves. That fraction of a tax
| is probably never going to equal what the hometown spent on
| things like education it will receive no return on.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I think it's very weak logic.
|
| First, even if someone actually paid the 300k it takes to
| raise a child, that doesn't mean that person owns the adult.
|
| And second, who is paying that? Education (in Japan and the
| UK) is primarily funded at a national level. So Tokyo/London,
| have already contributed significantly to the cost of that
| person's education (and to the education of plenty of people
| who will never move there to work). And most of the costs of
| raising kids are paid either by parents or at a national
| level.
|
| It seems to me this is just post hoc justification for taking
| resources out of productive areas that need them and sending
| them to unproductive areas that don't. That might be
| "democratic" if there are a lot of unproductive areas. But it
| isn't fair or efficient or effective. And it will soak up
| resources better spent helping people who actually need
| them...
| lozenge wrote:
| Yes, Lexit! London should declare independence from the UK.
| Then it won't need to maintain all that inefficient non-
| megacity infrastructure.
| imtringued wrote:
| It won't have to pay to maintain the roads between the city
| and the farms. What a bargain!
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| This argument, against redistribution from cities to rural
| areas of a country, seems to also apply against aid from rich
| countries to poor ones. In both cases, there are less-
| expensive, less-"developed" places where it is possible to have
| a family and raise children; richer, more-developed places
| where all the jobs are; and a flow of people from the former to
| the latter. These might be called "core" and "periphery".
| imtringued wrote:
| The obvious solution would be to introduce a negative
| interest rate on cash so that rich city dwellers cannot
| accumulate massive trade surpluses against small towns which
| then means people don't have to move out of town to get a
| job.
|
| It's quite tiring to see all these "faux" free market
| advocates or liberals, while they do absolutely nothing to
| actually get closer to the impossible ideal. They see the
| free as in free beer, i.e. reducing "government intervention"
| to let special interest groups get away with shady behavior
| instead of addressing known conflict sources and making
| control over them irrelevant.
| modo_mario wrote:
| >I am not at all convinced that towns have a claim to the tax
| revenue of people who don't use it's services.
|
| The article mentions such a service tho. Education. On the
| other hand I don't think the support for those early years
| amount to 40% of ones paycheck but not everyone participates
| so...
|
| >worse health
|
| How so? I would think it is the opposite based on studies about
| allergy prevalence, etc
|
| >less equality
|
| I don't think this is a constant either. I'm curious to see a
| broad study but if there's ever places i've seen stark wealth
| divides to slap one in the face it's been big cities.
|
| That said as towns person I still agree that the move to cities
| is not a bad thing especially if we wish to preserve more
| nature and so is the push for it. I also think this continuous
| urbanisation will help their or our birthrates but the world
| population can't and shouldn't grow endlessly.
| LukeShu wrote:
| > amount to 40% of ones paycheck
|
| 3.2% of one's paycheck. 40% of the residence tax, which the
| article asserts is about 8% of one's pre-tax salary;
| 40%x8%=3.2%.
| [deleted]
| namovat wrote:
| What stupid thing is this
| Arn_Thor wrote:
| An incredibly cool, inventive and awesome system! And somehow
| quintessentially Japanese too. Lovely writeup.
| tomatowurst wrote:
| This is essentially equalization payments, it's not at all
| unique to Japan. Even Canada does it.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Wasn't 2008 roughly the start of the "every town has a mascot"
| trend in Japan? I wonder if this law helped is part of the reason
| pushing that trend.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| I don't think there is any particular connection
| skhr0680 wrote:
| I think the modern mascots are inspired by Hikonyan (2007)
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| A mascot existing wouldn't inspire towns to invest resources
| in developing their own. Sure, they mah have had some hopes
| that it would lead to similar merchandizing sales or tourism
| growth, but that dream likely died quickly.
|
| A cute character regularly reminding people of their home to
| take advantage of this tax makes more sense to me.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| Even though the furusato nozei system was originally
| created around the same time as local mascots started to
| become popular in 2008, there wasn't competition from
| municipalities to try to attract donations until around
| 2016.
|
| Mascot characters like Kumamon, which were created after
| 2008 but before the furusato nozei system really started
| attracting attention, were specifically created to attract
| tourism, not to attract donations.
|
| So even though it might seem that the timing would match
| up, it's not really true that there is a connection.
|
| Furthermore, when municipalities started trying to compete
| for donations, they didn't use mascots, they just started
| bribing people with return gifts. Maybe in theory
| municipalities could have used mascots to try to attract
| donations, but in reality they don't seem to have done
| that.
| Hamuko wrote:
| There's an ongoing study into furusato nozei in Finland. However,
| they've apparently decided to axe the tax rebate aspect of the
| system, so it's basically only going to amount to a municipal
| marketplace ("donate" money, get goods in return).
|
| https://www.epressi.com/tiedotteet/maaseutu/japanin-kotiseut...
| xunn0026 wrote:
| Needs a (2018). I knew I read it and wondered if there's anything
| new here?
| [deleted]
| benou wrote:
| Looks similar to Equalization payments [1] already used in
| several places in the world.
|
| It looks to me that this being organized by the state should be
| more fair and efficient, but the additional "local connection"
| you get is a nice touch though.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equalization_payments
| azernik wrote:
| With a big difference:
|
| Instead of the state deciding how much to equalize and who the
| recipients should be, rich cities preempted that and set their
| own equalization contributions unilaterally. In the process,
| instead of deciding on the equalization recipients through any
| political process or deliberation, they opened that decision up
| to individual taxpayers.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| And apparently some search engine intermediary gets to take a
| cut for making the proverbial website. Sounds way efficient,
| good job to the free market of choice on this one.
| erwincoumans wrote:
| Omoshiroi! This is a really nice write up. Education is indeed
| very expensive and the towns outside of Tokyo have difficulties
| surviving, with only older people remaining there. Those towns
| have to be very creative to attract money and people. You can get
| a house for free, if you will live there, similar to some Italian
| towns.
|
| In the Netherlands we have similar issue of towns fighting for
| survival in more rural parts (Limburg). They try to combine
| schools of several towns to reduce the cost of teachers, and
| similar combining police stations.
|
| Lowering the friction for such 'gift tax' is interesting,
| Japanese are big into all kind of little gifts: if you go on
| holiday you bring something small, an Omiage. If you attend a
| birthday party, not only you bring a present (which is usual
| everywhere) but the guest also get a little gift in return, an
| Okaeshi.
| Semaphor wrote:
| The article generated a big discussion at the time (254
| comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18256660
| coobird wrote:
| Actually, many city governments in Japan already get a
| redistribution from the national government in "local tax
| allocation" to the tune of over 100 billion USD every year, and
| cities like Tokyo with a large tax base or industry are excluded
| from this. Then there's "hometown tax" so local municipalities in
| Tokyo and the surrounding areas are losing local tax revenue.
|
| I suspect a that many are not aware that taxes destined for the
| local government they live ("residence tax") in gets diverted to
| other cities, especially because many salaried workers don't do
| their own taxes, as was mentioned in the article. It's gotten to
| the point that some cities were running public service
| announcements saying that "donating through hometown tax leads to
| loss of local tax revenues" and saying funding for services like
| city-run daycare can be at risk.
|
| In 2021, Tokyo "lost" about 400 million USD in tax revenue to
| this program, so it's not a trivial amount.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Well... I can say I am glad America doesn't have this.
| caseyross wrote:
| (2018)
|
| Discussed at the time:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18256660
| helen___keller wrote:
| > This counsels that a young person born and educated in e.g.
| Gifu move to Tokyo after graduation to earn a living. > Many,
| many do. While Japan's overall population is declining, Tokyo's
| increases by about 100,000 people per year.
|
| Notably this differs from America in that rent acts as a natural
| counterbalance here. It's not common knowledge that a university
| graduate should move to New York or San Francisco, in fact if you
| aren't in a top paying field it's probably common knowledge that
| one should not move to these cities.
|
| I wonder how much different the population landscape of the
| United States would look like if NYC, the Bay Area, LA etc had
| ever figured out how to plan for urban growth in the same way
| Tokyo did (context: you can afford a small single family home on
| a middle class income in Tokyo, I think prices there are around
| 30% over other Japanese cities)
| MengerSponge wrote:
| Someone who knows more about Japanese culture and tax policy
| needs to weigh in, but my understanding is that housing is
| typically not considered a long-term investment vehicle, to the
| point that houses are expected to be demolished after some
| number of decades and depreciated accordingly.
|
| This mindset prevents an established base of property owners
| from blocking subsequent development, resulting in their
| property values skyrocketing.
|
| America might have a chance of fixing this with national-level
| zoning, which will never happen as long as current political
| alliances are the way they are.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I suspect the causality is reversed:
|
| Housing is not considered a long-term investment _because_
| demolition and new construction is easy.
| asciimike wrote:
| Really good article on zoning in Japan:
| http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-
| zoning.html
|
| I think it's a bit of both, it's not viewed as as much of
| an investment therefore zoning laws are lax, which mean
| that housing can't become an investment because anyone can
| build (up to) anything on a lot.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| I think the tax code even incentivizes demolition in that
| the taxes for sales of bare land versus land with a
| structure on it are less.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| My instinct is that the causal arrow begins with
| earthquakes and disposable (timber-based) building
| practices, which keep housing/structures from being viewed
| as stable long-term vehicles
| astrange wrote:
| Japanese houses are low quality (they have single pane
| windows, no insulation at all, and no central heat
| because they think it builds character). But they're no
| more timber based than US houses are, and there's nothing
| overly temporary about building a house out of wood,
| especially new forms like CLT.
| xxpor wrote:
| So why didnt California end up in that state, concidering
| it has nearly the same conditions?
| MengerSponge wrote:
| That's a very good question. Probably because modern
| California was settled by European colonizers, who
| brought their traditional construction and property
| practices with them?
|
| I'd love to see a sociologist's analysis of the ring of
| fire, though. If anyone knows of someone who isn't just
| talking out their butt (like me), please drop a rec
| quartesixte wrote:
| >That's a very good question. Probably because modern
| California was settled by European colonizers, who
| brought their traditional construction and property
| practices with them?
|
| Like lawns! Like California is the completely wrong state
| for lawns.
| ac29 wrote:
| California is seismically active, but not like Japan: htt
| ps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/EQs_1900
| ...
| [deleted]
| csours wrote:
| Point taken, but young people still move to larger regional
| towns. You may move to Houston, Atlanta, Kansas City, etc for
| economic reasons.
| SapporoChris wrote:
| One of the reasons for the immigration is while Tokyo is an
| expensive city, its costs can be compensated with a tiny
| apartment. However, it's not necessary to live in Tokyo. Many
| of the surrounding cities commute to Tokyo on a daily basis.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo#Demographics "During the
| daytime, the population swells by over 2.5 million as workers
| and students commute from adjacent areas. This effect is even
| more pronounced in the three central wards of Chiyoda, Chuo,
| and Minato, whose collective population as of the 2005 National
| Census was 326,000 at night, but 2.4 million during the
| day.[91]"
| golemiprague wrote:
| lovemenot wrote:
| Kalzumeus spoke about "Tokyo" to represent Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya
| and other large regional cities.
|
| As you might expect, these Tokyo-like cities are much more
| expensive at their centre than at their periphery.
| Nevertheless, I imagine your eyes may water when you find out
| just how much more so. I only know one of these cities well,
| and to be fair only in land values not in rentals.
|
| In absolute amounts, Tokyo itself is of course more unequal
| than smaller big cities. But the relative value distribution is
| perhaps fairly consistent across Tokyo-like cities.
|
| Within Tokyo-city, very central regions (Minato-ku) are valued
| at 4X over central urban districts (Nakano-ku), which in turn,
| are 8X more expensive to buy than the least valuable outer-
| Tokyo districts (Hachioji-shi). So there's a 32X differential
| in land values within that city's borders.
|
| Now, let's zoom out from the city itself. Within just a few
| hours drive or rail journey, we can easily get to 300X land
| values: $300 in Minato buys the same area of land worth around
| $1 in a fairly central district of a fairly large town in
| Nagano. Parts of mountains obviously go for much cheaper than
| land in these towns, but I don't have good market data for
| that. My guess is a further 5X - 10X.
|
| Undoubtedly, it is more than 1,000 times, and perhaps sometimes
| as much as 10,000X, more expensive to buy a plot of land in
| Japan, than another plot of the same size just 500Km - 1,000Km
| away.
|
| One may reasonably dispute these figures in detail. I did try
| to be conservative. Nevertheless, they are certainly right in
| the order of magnitude.
|
| Getting back to your point, I would say that in spite of the
| wonderful societal benefits of world-class transportation
| within and between cities, if the goal was to achieve ball-park
| economic parity across the regions then that policy in Japan
| has been a failure. Income & expenditure? Sure ... all of Japan
| looks pretty consistent. Property valuation? ... the
| discrepancy is almost unfathomable.
| paulmd wrote:
| That sounds like a lot, but 32x is probably less than the
| differential in the US between downtown manhattan and
| suburban Jersey or Delaware, and of course there's a whole
| rural level in the US far below that as well.
|
| That said, the whole "tokyo is just turbo-expensive!" thing
| is, in the broad strokes, generally false. Buying land in
| high-density commercial districts is going to be expensive,
| just like if you wanted to build a detached single-family
| home in downtown manhattan, but to put some hard numbers to
| it:
|
| In September 2020, the average listing price for a newly
| constructed detached wooden house in Tokyo of between 100-sqm
| and 300-sqm (1,076 sqft and 3,229 sqft) was:
|
| https://resources.realestate.co.jp/news/how-much-does-it-
| cos...
|
| > Greater Tokyo Area: Y=36,850,000 ($354,000)
|
| > Tokyo (23 Wards + Western Suburbs): Y=42,880,000 ($412,000)
|
| > Tokyo 23 Wards: Y=59,410,000 ($570,000)
|
| > Tokyo western suburbs: Y=40,110,000 ($385,000)
|
| --
|
| > For July to September 2020, the average sales price for a
| previously owned detached house in Tokyo was:
|
| > Tokyo (23 Wards + Western Suburbs): Y=46,150,000 ($443,000)
|
| -This was a year-on-year increase of 5.5% and an increase of
| 14.6% compared to the April to June period, when sales
| dropped sharply due to coronavirus social distancing
| measures.
|
| -This was also the highest average sales price since the July
| to September (3rd quarter) 2018 period of Y=47,020,000.
|
| > Tokyo 23 Wards: Y=57,170,000 ($549,000)
|
| -This was a year-on-year increase of 5.7% and an increase of
| 15.8% compared to the April to June period.
|
| -This was also the highest average sales price since the July
| to September (3rd quarter) 2018 period of Y=57,170,000.
|
| > Tokyo Western Suburbs: Y=32,730,000 ($319,000)
|
| -This was a year-on-year increase of 10.1% and an increase of
| 5.7% compared to the April to June period.
|
| --
|
| Honestly those prices aren't bad at all for "the densest
| metropolis in the world", especially considering the
| excellent transportation and other infrastructure that remove
| the need for cars (and they have cheap healthcare/etc by US
| standards as well). That is for 1k-3k sq-ft detached family
| homes, so that's not $300k for a shoebox, that's $300k for an
| average home by western standards. Undoubtedly some
| difference in materials/etc but it's not uncommon to see
| houses going for $750k-1m in 2nd-tier or 3rd-tier tech cities
| in the city proper and $500k+ on the outskirts.
|
| The bigger factor, by US standards, is that salaries are much
| lower, obviously that is a much bigger number if you're
| making $50k a year at the peak of your career, but again,
| with US housing prices generally being 2-4x japanese prices,
| it probably ends up being similar-ish.
|
| I have a friend that was subletting a room who got the boot
| because the owner was selling, got $750k for an average
| single-family home in a second-tier or third-tier city with
| insane tax rates.
| smcl wrote:
| TIL my 69m^2 flat in a mid-sized Central European city is
| "worth" broadly the same as a larger house in the Greater
| Tokyo area :-O
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| This is what can be accomplished with a homogeneous society.
| The US is too multicultural and has too many competing
| interests (both people and companies) for something like this
| to even be _thought_ of.
| kryptiskt wrote:
| Tokyo had tremendously expensive real estate before the 80s
| bubble burst, so I wonder if it's the result of wise planning
| as much as the outcome of the 30 years of stagnation.
| burlesona wrote:
| According to one study US GDP would be 9% higher if SF, LA, and
| NYC made room. They estimate NYC would grow to 40 million
| people.
|
| https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388
|
| Originally found via: https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-
| housing-theory-of-e...
| no_butterscotch wrote:
| It may be good that they don't make room then.
|
| I wonder if the US would just become a group of 3 or 4 large
| sprawling city-states.
| kitten_mittens_ wrote:
| This comment reminds me of https://www.theonion.com/new-
| study-finds-most-of-earth-s-lan....
| mactrey wrote:
| Isn't it weird to use the word "sprawling" here? A world
| where major cities are affordable would be _more dense_. It
| would be _easier_ to preserve land for its natural beauty.
| The US today is sprawling.
| SllX wrote:
| SFBA (maybe w/ Sacramento Area and Monterey Bay Area),
| Greater LA, Seattle Area, Portland+Vancouver and that's
| just the West Coast. Add in the 4+ in Texas, two or three
| different parts of Florida and we haven't even touched on
| the Northeast or Midwest still.
|
| Nah, the US would not become merely 3 or 4 large sprawling
| City-States. For all of us city dwellers, there's plenty
| that want nothing to do with anything that resembles a
| City.
| ghaff wrote:
| Note that _parts_ of somewhere like NYC are extremely
| expensive. Of course, those are the large parts of Manhattan
| and parts of Brooklyn where young professionals want to live.
| Other boroughs can be significantly less expensive but it 's
| not what most professionals mean when they think NYC. Of
| course, the general point applies. If you're talking about a
| lower income job you can get just about anywhere, moving to
| many big cities isn't a great financial decision.
| Linda703 wrote:
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| "And then some bureaucrat realized that this created a market:
| you, as a city government, can bid for taxpayers to select you as
| a hometown."
|
| This is the most Neal Stephenson thing I have read all morning.
| EE84M3i wrote:
| Disclaimer: IANAL, IANATA, this isn't tax advice, etc
|
| Foreigners residing in Japan are eligible to participate in
| furusato nouzei, but Americans might want to note the following
| clause in the section "Tax Must Be the Legal and Actual Foreign
| Tax Liability" in Publication 514 Foreign Tax Credit for
| Individuals[1], which states:
|
| >Subsidy received. Tax payments a foreign country returns to you
| in the form of a subsidy do not qualify for the foreign tax
| credit.
|
| >The term "subsidy" includes any type of benefit. Some ways of
| providing a subsidy are refunds, credits, deductions, payments,
| or discharges of obligations.
|
| Whether or not furusato nouzei falls under this clause seems to
| be up for some debate, and AFAIK the IRS hasn't made a public
| determination on it either way. I don't risk it, but I am under
| the impression there are some that do.
|
| Alternatively, the furusato nouzei portion could be not included
| in the tax credit? But would it be worthwhile...? Sounds like it
| depends on the situation and frankly seems like a lot of work to
| get a few gift baskets.
|
| [1]: https://www.irs.gov/publications/p514#idm139978451112272
| Hello71 wrote:
| is it common to need to take the FTC on residence taxes? my
| understanding is that US federal income taxes are lower than
| most foreign taxes, and skimming the Japanese personal income
| tax brackets, it seems to be slightly higher than US federal
| income taxes (ignoring deductions).
| chrischen wrote:
| Gift baskets is just what you opt for if you don't want a cash
| equivalent gift card.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Oh man, this is so confusing, and affects any American
| citizen/PR living abroad. In China, there are a bunch of weird
| kickbacks on your paycheck (e.g. public medical insurance cash
| benefit) that you have to be careful to document as income on
| your American tax return. And the whole mess of dealing with
| social security taxes.
| jollybean wrote:
| Now imagine this playing out on a global scale. Canada grabs a
| ton of doctors from developing nations. US grabs tons of Canada's
| best home grown talent for whatever economic purposes.
| [deleted]
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