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The story
A post reporting a government policy to “impose an 80 percent tax on real estate resales” became a hot topic on 5ch. Early in the thread, posters pointed out that the tax would only apply to short-term gains (roughly under 5 years of ownership) and wouldn’t affect ordinary homeowners who live in their property for 5+ years — a point many replies agreed with. Opinions were divided, however, over how to treat real estate businesses that renovate and resell properties, or people forced into early sales due to circumstances like divorce, and some questioned what the point of the tax even was.
What people said
Real estate flippers are absolutely losing it:
"D-… -ie, Japan!!"
"Is Japan a socialist country now?"
"If you let this slide, your taxes get raised too — you good with that?!"
"Just poor bureaucrats' jealousy, pandering to the masses lol"
They're freaking out more than I expected
The parting shots from the guy who lost at Old Maid (the card game) are always the same, huh
Better to pop it early, then
Only the flippers are gonna cry about it
People who live in their homes 5+ years aren't affected at all
Exactly this
I do think they should make some allowance for cases of amicable settlement due to divorce, though
like not treating it as a short-term transfer even if it's under 5 years
They buy properties, renovate them, and resell them, right?
Corporations are probably fine, I dunno though
What do you mean? You can't even transfer NISA holdings like that
You can sell once you've lived there 5 years
To begin with, hardly anyone buying a condo with a home loan is planning to flip it short-term anyway
Banks don't benefit if the loan gets paid off early, so they scrutinize whether you actually intend to live there pretty closely
A wall-of-text meltdown: "Supporting a policy like this is exactly why you'll all stay poor foreverrr!!"
How exactly does someone who already owns a home lose out from this?
Not trying to troll, I genuinely don't get it
Home loans come with big tax deductions and absurdly low interest rates
Plus they'll lend you tens of millions of yen based purely on your personal profile, with only the property itself as collateral and nothing else — that's a deal you'd never normally get
Does anyone actually benefit from making the guys who were profiting take a loss??
Because there are people getting hurt by it, that's why
If you swore eternal love and then said goodbye within 5 years, you don't deserve special consideration
If both parties are at fault, fine, but if it's clearly one person's fault, that's just sad
You chose that partner — that's on you
You chose that partner — that's on you
It's actually the opposite in practice
You'd know instantly if you ever traded a small-cap stock with a thin order book
Short-term trading also acts as lubrication for the market, so it's better not to carelessly hike the tax rate on it
Is that really true????
Are people actually being forced to buy overpriced real estate they don't want, or live in overpriced rentals they don't want to live in???
The people commissioning a building are thinking something like: a condo this size will bring in roughly this many residents, generating roughly this much economic activity
But once short-term traders jump in and jack up the price, those calculations stop holding up
Just as an example, though
Individual circumstances like job transfers or divorce are totally irrelevant
It's full of problems
Buying property, renovating it, or finding tenants to boost its value before selling is completely normal business
Tax that at 100% and the whole business model stops working
Actually, even China or North Korea probably wouldn't go this far
Here's the thing: Japan's tax code already has a provision for "heavily taxing short-term resales" — it's just currently dormant (suspended). No new tax needs to be created; if the suspension were lifted, the heavy taxation could come roaring back as early as tomorrow.
Couldn't you just run that kind of business through a corporation?
Right, corporations get exempted
Which makes me think this'll just end with everyone incorporating anyway
Those condos crammed onto tiny plots of land in Tokyo — guess they'll just have to tear them down?
Background and key points of this discussion
Under Japan’s current tax system, the tax rate on capital gains from selling real estate already varies by holding period: roughly 39% for “short-term capital gains” (property held 5 years or less) and roughly 20% for “long-term capital gains” (held over 5 years). Whether the “80% tax” discussed in the thread represents a strengthening of this existing framework or an entirely new regulation can’t be confirmed from the posts themselves, and the text alone doesn’t verify that the government has actually announced such a policy. For that reason, the headline frames it as a reported “government policy” rather than a confirmed fact. Thread opinion split over whether short-term resales for investment purposes should be treated the same as sales by renovate-and-resell businesses or sales driven by personal circumstances like divorce, with some speculating that corporations and individuals might be treated differently — though this too remains unconfirmed. One point readers could easily misread: the tax increase being discussed targets profits from short-term resale specifically, not “real estate investors” as a whole.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “[Good News] Government: “We will tax real estate resales at 80 percent” → Real estate investors lose their minds lmaooooo.”
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