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The story
A thread about a “singles tax” posted on 5ch’s “Live Report General” board was getting a lot of traction. The original poster opened by declaring that taxing single people “really can’t wait any longer,” but most replies pushed back, saying “there’s no rational reason to tax single people” and “a childless tax I’d get, but a singles tax makes no sense,” with opinion split over whether the tax should apply to all single people or be limited to those without children. Replies pointing out loopholes in the proposed system — such as how it would affect people undergoing fertility treatment, single-parent households, and the elderly — were also prominent.
What people said
What if someone's undergoing fertility treatment?
Let me ask you the opposite: why should fertility treatment make you tax-exempt?
Because it's sad?
That's irrelevant — there are single people who want to marry but can't, too
Punishment for what, exactly?
Every time I hear this I think: a guy who can't afford dating costs just because taxes went up a bit wouldn't date anyone even if he were rich
Well, politics itself is already tilted in favor of the elderly
Once a tax gets its foot in the door, it just keeps climbing from there
It's easy to imagine there were voices saying the consumption tax would be rough on poor people when it was introduced too
The fact that nobody imagined it'd hit 10% just shows a lack of imagination
If this turns a maybe-chance at marriage into a zero-chance, it's a failure as a birthrate countermeasure
You never had a chance anyway
A society where having kids actually pays off is how it should be
In Tokyo you get 130,000 points from the "Kodomo First" program — I'd like seconds on that
You need to picture cases like this too, you know
Child support is something you'd pay even while still married, and married people actually pay the singles tax too
That's messed up
That's distinguishable, so you'd just exclude them from the target
Whether you have dependents is already something you declare now
We should be thinking about how to scale society down instead
We're 40 years too late tackling this
We need to think about the future while there's still some momentum left
I think it'd be super easy, actually
If the government just bought kids off people, numbers would go up
Then you could just split it by whether there are dependents, right?
The fact that you have to bolt on a special allowance afterward means the initial framing was wrong from the start
That's exactly it — just distinguish by whether there are dependents
The dependent deduction already works that way now
What exactly would you be bolting on afterward?
It won't increase, it won't increase
To begin with, a lot of women simply don't want to give birth
What if they said they'd buy kids for 20 million yen, tax-free?
What do you think the reason for not wanting to give birth is?
It's because childrearing robs you of both money and freedom
But if they bought the kid off you, that actually solves the problem — you'd have both money and time
they're actually doing a fair amount already
What's actually needed is a facility you can hand childcare over to entirely
Doing housework and childcare while both parents work is brutal
But if you're not a dual-income household, the finances are brutal instead
No joke, it's nowhere near enough
At the very least, fully subsidize childbirth-related costs
Giving birth requires hospitalization 100% of the time, and while delivery and the operating table are subsidized, related costs like the hospital bed fee are entirely out of pocket
Also, stop making daycare free only from age 3 while charging tens of thousands of yen (depending on income) for kids up to age 2
There are cases where, if the wife can only manage part-time work anyway, it's actually better for her not to work and just raise the kid at home
So what's the rational reason for taxing only single people?
They won't have relatives to look after them down the line and will use more nursing-care resources than others — that's what you'd be taxing for
Just because you have kids doesn't mean they'll actually take care of you
Nursing-care insurance premiums are already being collected anyway
Even with relatives around, you still use nursing-care resources
If anything, people with relatives tend to live longer and end up using more medical resources
Though it is a bit sad, since some people can't get married no matter how hard they try
If that's the reason, then it should really be a childless tax, not a singles tax
Background and Key Points of This Debate
There is no tax actually named the “singles tax.” The term caught on online because of the child and childcare support levy system that took full effect in April 2026, which is collected as a surcharge on health insurance premiums — meaning the burden falls on single people regardless of whether they have children, which is why it came to be nicknamed a “de facto singles tax.” Where opinion in the thread split was over where to draw the line: taxing all single people versus limiting it to people without children (the so-called “childless tax”), with many posters criticizing a design that fails to account for people undergoing fertility treatment or single-parent households. Whether this would actually help the declining birthrate was never demonstrated, and citing the consumption tax as a precedent, some worried it could become “a foot in the door” for the burden to keep climbing after introduction.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Live Report General) thread “[Bad News] The Singles Tax Is Actually Becoming Necessary.”
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