earticle

영어

The paper aims to investigate inheritance and gift tax system and their recent reforms in Japan, also to propose some policy implications to northeast Asian countries. The revenue from the inheritance and gift tax accounts for 3 or 4 percents at central level. Though the share is not so high, the advance of stock economy and aging society has made the two taxes more important in Japan. Their recent reforms include the issues with the intention of stimulating intergenerational wealth transfer from the old to the young by the inheritance and gift tax at the perspective of boosting Japanese economy, and emphasize the enhancement of equity function by utilizing the two taxes. The paper discusses the issues on tax reforms focusing on 2009 through 2013 reforms. In particular, 2013 tax reform makes the provisions for raising progressive tax rates of the two taxes, lowering a basic deduction, and raising a deduction for physically handicapped persons and minors from taxable income. The implications which the inheritance and gift tax reforms in Japan provide for northeast Asian countries are: 1) the importance of simultaneous reform of the two taxes for stimulating intergenerational wealth transfers, 2) the improvement of efficiency by reducing special provisions in the two taxes, 3) the examination of whether real tax burdens correspond to the amounts of actual bequests or not, and 4) the accumulation of the data concerning the process of inheritance and gift behavior in the long-run.