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The story
On September 15, the cabinet approved a tax reform outline that will cut the consumption tax on food from 8% to 1% for two years starting next April. The move fulfills a tax-cut pledge Prime Minister Takaichi made during the lower house election six months ago, and covers all food items except alcohol and dining out. While there’s hope the cut will ease household budgets amid ongoing price hikes, supermarkets and other retailers face the burden of updating price tags and register tax settings for roughly 15,000 items. Commenters on the thread were split: some said price increases outweigh the tax cut so they won’t really feel it, while others welcomed having more money to spend on things like eating out. Some also worried about the confusion when the rate reverts in two years.
Published 9/16 (Wed) 11:15
Yomiuri Shimbun Online
On the 15th, the cabinet approved a tax reform outline to cut the consumption tax on food from 8% to 1% starting next spring. It has been just over six months since Prime Minister Takaichi campaigned on “tax cuts” in the February lower house election. With rising prices squeezing household budgets, many are hoping for relief, though some worry about the impact of reverting to 8% two years later. Restaurants and other businesses concerned about revenue losses from the tax cut are calling for more robust relief measures.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Say it louder!
Guess everyone's thinking the same thing… lol
Easy to miss since your eyes go straight to the meat, but that Krewrap (a plastic food-wrap brand) is a splurge too
This is gonna get brought up forever
Wonder if it was even real
Just eat a hamburg steak instead
No way that's happening
Food prices are already going up again anyway
Same excuse for the hikes as always
Inflation is exactly what the public was hoping for, you know
The gap between a food-only cut and a flat 8% is only about 3 trillion yen, but factoring in total costs, a flat rate would actually be quicker and easier to implement
It'd also help boost spending beyond just food
Apparently they're handing out subsidies for takeout costs in the restaurant industry
Exactly
They've been re-tagging for price hikes constantly for years now, so what are they even complaining about
And now a few yen off is supposed to
really get people wanting to spend more?
People say that a lot, but by that logic you could just as easily argue that raising the consumption tax 1-2% wouldn't matter either, given how fast prices are rising
They don't get how much debate goes into central banks raising or lowering rates by just 0.25% at a time
So true
Breaks are cigarettes and canned coffee
Dinner's a convenience store bento and beer
At this rate you'll be poor for life
Yomiuri supports Takaichi though
It's this, isn't it?
If that's enough to make you buy it, you probably would've bought it already
Right. Beef is expensive right now because of the yen exchange rate
Imported beef obviously, but domestic beef too, since the feed is imported
There's no way they'll actually raise it back
A simultaneous lower and upper house election is even possible, so they'll have no choice but to run on one of these:
Extend it another 2 years
or
Make the reduced food tax rate a permanent 5% instead of time-limited
And if it's April, that's only 3 months short of a full year, so they could've just made it 0%
We've already been made to wait this long, what's another 3 months
They're simply timing it to line up with the unified local elections
If that's the concern, just decline your pension
Better to bump pensions up to 10 million yen a year so people can leave their descendants a fortune
If they "cut pensions," that just makes the Ministry of Finance and the "Vase" (slang for the Unification Church, tied to its vase-selling scandal) happy
Is that really worth all this fuss?
If you've got a high schooler in their eating-machine phase, it's way more than that, so the fuss is justified
This is a colossally stupid policy
That's literally my job, every single day
We change price tags every day already, so it's no extra work
Actually the perfect chance to quietly raise prices too
You're putting stuff in your basket without even looking at the price tag? Impressive lol
The little mallet-shaped price stickers are basically an endangered species, but shelf tags still exist
They're there lol. Convenience stores and supermarkets both stick price tags right on the shelves
There's no way you'd buy something without knowing the price — is it priced like fresh fish at the market or something lol
Background and Key Points of This Story
The measure to cut the consumption tax on food — which already falls under the reduced tax rate — from 8% to 1% for a two-year period starting next April was approved by the cabinet in the September 15 tax reform outline. It covers all food items except alcohol and dining out, and supermarkets and other retailers will need to update price tags and POS system tax settings all at once, a burden that became a major talking point in the thread. Some commenters speculated that the April start date was timed to align with the unified local elections, but this is speculation, not an official explanation. Since the system is designed to revert to 8% after two years, how the government handles the tax hike or a possible extension when that deadline arrives will be the next thing to watch. In the thread, some argued that price increases outweigh the size of the tax cut, making it hard to feel any real benefit, while others pointed out that some households will see a meaningful change in absolute spending — how much the effect is felt seemed to depend on the size of a household’s food budget. It’s also worth noting that the “more money for eating out” comment referenced in the original headline was just one reaction among many, not a universal sentiment.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “A woman who couldn’t afford beef says a 1% consumption tax means she can finally “afford the dining out she’d been holding back on”… supermarkets re-pricing 15,000 items say “employees are exhausted”.”
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