JAPANESE WOMEN NEWS
"THE 1.03-MILLION-YEN CEILING"
The government's Tax Commission early in April agreed that they would study
an option to reduce a gspouse exemptionh in the future. If it should happen, it
is expected to have significant impact on the psychology of working housewives
an. It may, at the end, change the working style of Japanese women drastically
in the future.
In the current Japanese tax system, a man with his wife financially dependent
to him can claim the spouse exemption annually of 380,000 yen (US$3,200.00). It
has been in reality a reward to the wives for not working on their own to support
the male work force.@
If a wife is back to job market and her annual income exceeds a line of 1.03
million yen, the married couple would lose the spouse exemption privilege and
can end up paying with bigger taxes altogether and smaller take-home income for
the family. A worker, earning more than the critical amount also has to pay own
income tax, insurance and pension.
The system has in effect discouraged Japanese married women to work full-time.
Many prefer to work part-time or quit when their income for the year reach close
to the 1.03 million yen line. Even if they are given opportunities for promotion
or more rewarding jobs, they are reluctant to grab them.
In a widely-accepted norm in Japan, people have taken it for granted that every
family has a full-time housewife and a full-time bread-winner.
The Tax Commission's recent move for making the spouse tax smaller is a result
of the debate over the taxation inequality between working women and non-working
housewives.
We still have to see how the proposal will develop, and how soon changes will
be made. If the prestigious exemption is minimized,
However, it should relieve women from the psychological restriction?and the sense
of guilt--- about working. The proposed idea fits better also to the government
es long-time goal of building a gender-free society to which both men and women
would be able to relate and commit on truly equal basis.
We should take note that working wives in younger generation tend to have more
children than their non-working counterparts. It is one of the facts pointed out
by a scholar on the Tax Commission. It makes an amusing contrast to the anachronistic
yet popular perception, normally by males, that Japan is in short of babies because
women are working.
JUN. 2002, by Mutsuko Murakami
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