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The story
Former Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said in an interview with the Asahi Shimbun on the 6th that the “government bond NISA” concept — which would add individual-type government bonds to the new NISA’s lineup of eligible products — “probably needs to be considered carefully.” NISA was originally designed to encourage investment in assets with fluctuating value, such as stocks and mutual funds, so whether adding principal-guaranteed government bonds fits the purpose of the system has become a point of debate.\n\nIn response, opinions split on 5ch’s Business News+ board over whether government bonds are a fitting use for the tax-free investment allowance. Some argued that bonds — with their low risk of losing value — suit elderly investors better, while others countered that if you’re going to use a precious tax-free allowance, you should put it toward higher-yielding assets. Posters also went back and forth over the difference between individual-type government bonds and those sold over the counter.
November 7, 2026, 6:00 AM
Tsuguo Sasai
Former Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, in an exclusive interview with the Asahi Shimbun on the 6th, said that the “government bond NISA” plan — adding individual-type government bonds to the new NISA (Nippon Individual Savings Account) program — “probably needs to be considered carefully.”
Source: asahi.com / Original article here
What people said
Seriously. The interest's already getting discounted as it is.
Drop this NISA nonsense, it just weakens the yen anyway.
No way that'd fly given the current situation.
They just decided financial income counts toward late-stage elderly (75+) health premiums even without filing a return.
That's a de facto tax hike.
It'll trickle down to National Health Insurance eventually too.
On the flip side, folding Japanese government bonds into NISA — even maxed out, it'd only amount to a pension top-up, so I'm fine with that.
More buyers means lower interest rates too.
Meanwhile it's a family business running Japanese-language schools.
Hold a bond to maturity and there's no benefit (stocks are the better deal), but selling it off right away is a rough way to use NISA.
True for young people, but for the elderly there's a risk stocks drop right near the end, so bonds are the better fit.
Actually, over-the-counter sales are doing great right now.
That's exactly why rates are falling.
The financial institutions that got stuck buying Japanese government bonds a few years back are pretty much all sitting on massive unrealized losses.
That risk doesn't go away just because an individual buys it instead.
If an elderly person buys a bond and passes away partway through, it's entirely possible the surviving family, when they go to cash it in, finds it's underwater and eats a huge loss.
…Though I guess it doesn't matter to the person who already passed, strictly speaking.
It's probably an individual-type bond, not a regular interest-bearing one, so there's no unrealized loss.
The Ministry of Finance buys back individual-type government bonds at 100% face value.
What you're talking about is the over-the-counter kind, but individuals basically don't buy that one.
So why not just create and sell an individual bond that actually carries risk of losing principal?
It'd pay a better rate than the conventional individual bond, so there'd be demand for it too.
That's basically a junk bond…
For people 70 and up, maybe there's room to consider it.
But seriously, don't tax government bonds in the first place.
Even at a regular bank, interest on ordinary and time-deposit accounts gets taxed about 20% too.
Same deal as Japanese stocks.
It just feels like a "punishment" for making money without working for it.
Even if Kishida doesn't care, the banks would likely put up serious resistance.
They already tax deposit interest heavily, and this could end up making that tax-free too by comparison.
If anyone's actually going to do it, I'll pay the tax on your bond yield myself — just hand that precious allowance over to me instead.
Good point, you just made me realize something.
Obviously you'd want to make the higher-earning option the tax-free one.
For the 20-year individual bond the Finance Ministry is reportedly weighing right now, I seriously doubt the government would buy it back at 100% face value.
Or maybe they'll cut the rate way down compared to the over-the-counter version.
Re: #44
Big corporations getting government subsidies directly will be laughing all the way to the bank.
Meanwhile, banks stop pulling in individual deposits, lending dries up, and small and mid-sized businesses go under left and right — obviously.
NISA isn't even needed here.
NISA is a bureaucrat-cooked-up scheme to get young people who don't even understand stocks to pour money into them so someone can skim a margin off it.
Once things get balanced out, you can't rake in that margin anymore, right?
Truth is, they didn't want government bonds getting attention at all.
"The hell are you even talking about" (the classic comeback).
Also, there's no such thing as a "Cayman Islands government bond."
That's British territory — the local authority just barely withholds any tax on bond interest for locally incorporated entities, so the government sets up a corporation there to take advantage of it.
Concretely: when the Bank of Japan says, "There's YY trillion yen in maturing/redeemable government bonds," the government just hands back those bonds (pieces of paper) and gives the BOJ refunding bonds (more pieces of paper) worth YY trillion yen in exchange.
I imagine the actual work is someone at the BOJ typing in YY trillion yen on a computer terminal and hitting enter.
(Never actually worked at the BOJ, so this is just my guess.)
The BOJ also acts as the government's bookkeeper.
This fiscal arrangement rests on the proviso in Article 5 of the Public Finance Act, below:
Public Finance Act, Article 5:
"As a general rule, the government shall not have the Bank of Japan underwrite the issuance of public bonds, nor shall it borrow money from the Bank of Japan.
Provided, however, that this shall not apply — within amounts approved by the Diet — in cases where special circumstances exist."
No country in the world, Japan included, redeems its government bonds with actual tax cash.
It's all refunding bonds… (citing economist Takuji Aida)
Do that and the stock market takes damage.
Also tax revenue drops, which pushes bond yields up (so would that make people buy them? …wait, hold on).
They're reportedly looking at Italy, which has had success with individual bonds, as a model, so I doubt they'd go all the way.
Background and Key Points on This Topic
The “government bond NISA” idea former PM Kishida touched on would add individual-type government bonds to the list of products eligible under the tax-free NISA (Nippon Individual Savings Account) program, and the Asahi Shimbun article itself flags “consistency with the purpose of the system” as the key issue. NISA was originally built to encourage long-term investment in assets with fluctuating value, like stocks and mutual funds, so thread opinion split over whether folding in principal-guaranteed government bonds actually squares with that purpose. Some argued government bonds — with their low risk of losing value — suit older investors better, while others countered that a limited tax-free allowance should go toward higher-yielding assets instead.\n\nOne point readers often mix up is the difference between “individual-type government bonds” and the bonds sold over the counter by banks and securities firms: the former are effectively bought back by the Ministry of Finance, so they rarely rack up market valuation losses — and several thread replies hinge on that very distinction. The debate over government bond NISA is also tangled up with plans to strengthen taxation on financial income and with the government’s broader tax-revenue problems, so it’s worth remembering this isn’t just a simple proposal to tweak a program — it’s playing out against the backdrop of fiscal policy as a whole.
*This article is compiled by excerpting and summarizing the 5ch (Business News+) thread “ŠÝ“cŒ³Žñ‘ŠA‘ÂNISAuTd‚ÈŒŸ“¢•K—vvŧ‰ü³˜_‹c‚ɉe‹¿‚à [’©ˆê‚©‚ç•Â“X‚܂ŃӚ]” (original thread title garbled in source).
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