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Longer checkout times would inconvenience customers, but hiring additional workers to cut the times would weigh on our earnings.

12 Comments

A senior official of a fast food chain, referring to increases in clerical work from a proposed consumption tax refund system for daily necessities. (Jiji Press)

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Fast food or any food purchased to sit down and eat at a restaurant should not be part of the refund - that is absurd. More importantly, instead of a refund sytem, food purchased in a market should be exempt from the consumption tax or at least taxed at a much lower rate. It would be much simpler to implement. I can`t imagine mom & pop veggie/fruit shops installing "My Number" card readers...ridiculous.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

The "my number" card readers are one of the MOST ABSURD things I have ever heard of. Mom and pops stores will be gone gone gone if they have to install these horribly conceived monstocities.

7 ( +7 / -0 )

Japan should take the California route: All fresh food, medicine, and insurance are exempt from sales tax. Go to a supermarket to buy a fresh chicken and the (roughly) 9% tax does not appear; buy a roasted one from the on-site delicatessen and it does.

Perhaps that is a bit too complicated for these isles, but it still would be better to error on the side of protecting the poor. The excuse that "The rich would benefit as well as the poor!" is lame. There are many other ways to make up that gap.

10 ( +10 / -0 )

Most registers in America are made in Japan, Korea or China, and seem to handle very well raw bought chicken as opposed to spit cooked chicken.

It is super easy to do, as it is all computerized. If the Americans can do it, and by the way, they score much lower on math tests than the Japanese, I am sure the Japanese could pull it off too.

Why would they want the my number card being input into so many devices. What a logistical nightmare when the hacking occurs.

6 ( +6 / -0 )

If your checkout system is computerized, automatically calculating taxes at different rates is easy to do. If it is not easy to do, whoever designed your system is incompetent. In the US, every grocery store, Wal-Mart, Meijers, Costco... every store that sells both food and not food in a state where food isn't taxed has this system in place. Its disruption is trivial. All you have to do is amend your store product database so every item you sell has one more category called "Tax Rate". Face it, the only reason politicians are opposed to just calculating taxes differently is that they want to tie My Number into this.

9 ( +9 / -0 )

In Japan, it has been policy for thousands of years to keep taxes high enough so ordinary people have to struggle to survive, therefore the pleebs are kept fully occupied on getting by and therefore harmless to assembling in any meaningful way to demand a more equal democracy from the ruling elites.

The mo' it changez, the mo' it stay the same y'all
1 ( +3 / -2 )

Japanese in the government don't want to copy America....again. They would rather appear stupid and incompetent and ruin everything than have their pride take that sort of body blow again.

Idiots.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Three kinds of scam happening here people:

Scam 1: I smell some corporate cronyism at work here, folks. Imagine all of the profits companies like Toshibe, NEC, Panasonic etc. will reap from selling millions of "My Number" reader machines to businesses all over the country. This is scam even bigger than charging people 30,000 yen to buy and install an ETC reader in their car.

Scam 2: The government plans to limit the refunds available per year. I read one report that said the cap could be a mere 4,000 yen. If this happens, the government knows that most people will just never hand over their card and even if they do, they will not be bothered to apply for such a minuscule refund. So, the J-politicians will look like they have a heart, while their corporate patrons rake it in and the total tax receipts will be barely affected.

Scam 3: The government will have a pretty comprehensive record of what people are buying, at least in regards to food. What will they do with that information? Sell it to marketers? Use it to catch tax cheat and welfare cheats? Who knows, but one thing is for sure. This data will not be secure and their will be numerous hacks and/or data breaches.

Whoever came up with this scheme is either a brilliant evil mastermind or an incompetent hack, either way it is the sheeple of the nation who bear the burden.

6 ( +6 / -0 )

Just stop taxing food and essentials... (the new "My Number" system already makes me feel like I'm a prisoner...)

1 ( +1 / -0 )

I forgot to mention: the actual tax refund will be for the 2% that will be added in 2017. So, food will still be taxed at 8%, everything else at 10%, if you jump through the hoops to collect your meager refund. What a joke...

2 ( +3 / -1 )

People need full-time, decent-paying jobs in this society. And they need job security -- they cannot live with the axe hanging over their heads 24/7. Employers' greed is out of hand.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

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