9 ms·

Japan's tax laws get in way of more women working full time

47 points by Ultramanoid 8y ago

eska 8y ago
I can't help but feel like this is a strong misinterpretation of the circumstances. The author tries really hard to make this a woman's issue, but as far as I know the law doesn't lay out different rules for women specifically, just the less-earning spouses that take care of the children, so the same problems exist for husbands that stay at home. However, women universally tend to not marry "down" when it comes to finances, education, etc., while men do. They also tend to find men without a career to be unambitious, which is generally considered to be an unattractive trait in men for romantic purposes. This is true for poor countries rife with sexism, as well as for rich countries that treat women and men equally. (All of this has been covered by extensive sutdies) In Japan in particular young women tend to have high expectations of men, because their parents and grandparents had no financial issues during the economic bubble and their mothers and grandmothers did not have to work at all or much. Many Japanese women can't wait to marry in order to start a family and stop working; it's their life goal and they only consider their career to be temporary from the start. This even true for most women who graduate from elite universities in Japan (I saw a study about Tokyo university graduates mentioning this). So that's why in practice we're talking about mostly women here and I wouldn't blame men for that. The argument about the time spent on housework also sounds rather weird and insignificant to me, because it mentions a significant gap between men and women, but also mentions that Japanese spend less time on housework in general. 263mins = 4h23m a week is a number that I pull off without trouble as a single man working full-time without the least bit of help from a spouse. The article also doesn't mention whether this number is limited to families with children or the whole population. The part about bento boxes is just a meme. Women are not considered to be bad mothers if they don't create bento boxes that look like Pikachu and friends. There are legitimate issues for women working in Japan, some of which we have in other countries, some we don't, but I don't see any of them in this article. All I see is "less-earning spouses (usually women) get too many benefits, that's why the alternative of working isn't attractive enough". And instead of complaining about beautiful bento boxes, the author should draw attention to serious issues like the incredible lack of kindergarden spots and the like.
- mikekchar 8y ago
  Just to agree with you on the bentou boxes. I worked in a high school for 5 years and often ate lunch with the students. Never once did I see an overly cute benou box :-) My wife makes my bentou box, but at that time I made hers. It takes about 20 minutes to make in the morning, but you have to be organised. Japanese people also tend to have a large, cooked morning meal (which my wife now makes, but when I was working at the school I made for her). For me, I'd often be cooking for about an hour every morning (including both breakfast and lunch), which meant getting up at about 6. Japanese people bathe at night, which frees up a bit of time. I don't want to understate the difficulty that women have in the workplace in Japan. The breakfast and lunch are manageable, but then you have to do laundry (and if you have school kids, it's a big job in Japan). People hang their laundry outside, so it's a problem if you aren't there to get it if it rains. You have to be back in time to cook dinner for your kids, but you have responsibilities to stay late at work most days, etc, etc. Some of my female colleagues barely slept and it just wasn't healthy. Distributing the workload is not so hard, but it needs a cultural shift. It's slowly happening though. You may note that my wife cooks for me now and wonder why... I liked doing breakfast and lunch, but I think my wife prefers doing it herself (my bentous aren't very good, I'll admit). I suspect (but don't know) that she also feels better, as a woman, if she does that job. That's a strange idea in western culture, but perhaps it will sound more understandable if I say that I feel better, as a man, if I make a salary. Stupid and arbitrary, but culture is like that sometimes. It's hard to change and you need to go slowly.
  - eska 8y ago
    Thank you for your input, mikekchar. Even if anecdotal, it mirrors my experiences and what I hear from Japanese acquaintances as well. I agree that the cultural shift might just take more time, but is already happening. I see parallels to earlier developments in the west.
- rayiner 8y ago
  > The author tries really hard to make this a woman's issue, but as far as I know the law doesn't lay out different rules for women specifically, just the less-earning spouses that take care of the children, so the same problems exist for husbands that stay at home. The article doesn't claim that the law is intentionally discriminatory. It says that the law disincentivizes women to work, which can be true even if that is not the intent of the law. Stricter voter ID requirements don't facially discriminate between different groups, but they still have the effect of suppressing voting by minority groups because of how they interact with other social factors. And the underlying claim is an uncontroversial one in economics: tax or welfare benefits that phase out with higher incomes disincentivize work. That's a generic truth about economics. It just happens to be a "woman's issue" in this context because (1) women happen to disproportionately have the lower paying jobs, because of gender norms; and (2) Abe's government is trying to get more women in the workforce to deal with Japan's crushing labor shortage.
mikekchar 8y ago
Just for people who are new to the Japan Times, I should point out that this article is somehow in the "News" section, not the "Opinion" sections. How they can get away with saying, "If the government really wants to encourage women to work more, it should revoke the tax deduction framework." in a "news" piece without it being a quote, I have no idea, but this is absolutely typical of the Japan Times. I should also point out that the piece is full of misleading information used to bolster their argument. For example: "Prior to 2018, a person who made no more than ¥1.03 million a year in income did not have to pay income tax and could be claimed as a dependent on their spouse’s tax return, meaning a deduction of ¥380,000." This is completely dependent upon the spouse's salary. ¥1.03 million is about $10K, just in case you aren't familiar with the currency. A deduction of ¥380,000 is 38% -- which implies that the marginal tax rate of the spouse is %38 percent. This would be a huge salary for the spouse in Japanese terms. It's important to understand that personal income tax in Japan is very low. However, you have to pay a fixed 7% for pension and health coverage and another 5-10% for city and prefectural tax (depending on where you live). There are no deductions on pension, city and prefectural tax. Typically if you are paying an overall 30-35% tax rate, your personal income tax rate is only somewhere around 15-20%. Have a look here and scroll down to the personal tax rates: https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2206.html https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2206.html A 40% marginal tax rate starts at 18 million yen, or $180K. Yes, not so high in SV, but I don't know anyone where I live that makes this much as a salary. A more typical marginal tax rate is 15 or 20%. Like I said, this is typical for Japan Times "news" stories unfortunately. I feel odd saying this because while the piece is terrible, I actually agree with the idea of reducing dependent deductions and the need for more Japanese women to get positions in permanent positions in Japan.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
throwaway2w09 8y ago
I would like to know when, if ever, we will be able to have a conversation on HN about whether women working (i.e. working outside rather than raising a family) is an absolute unquestionable good thing. Surely we can't complain about falling birth rates at the same time that we complain about we don't have enough women working? Japan particularly wants to avoid the elephant in the room.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  Who's complaining about falling birth rates? The planet is overpopulated, fewer humans can only be a good thing.
  - throwaway2w09 8y ago
    The Japanese government for one. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-47127738 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-47127738 They already have more pensioners than children being born. The same trend can be seen in virtually every single developed country. We are soon to going to not be able to afford to pay these pensioners if there are not enough people paying taxes. Hopefully you don't actually think pensions are somehow grown on trees.
    - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      Ha! Its only hyperbole if it isn't true. Paper money grows on trees! Yes, we can print the money and the world won't end. There's not some automatic hyper-inflation that happens when money is minted. There's so much around already you see. Think of cash as points in a game. If we keep playing games, racking up points, the points don't necessarily become worthless. They may change a little as confidence varies. It's not about the imaginary points. Its about the goods and services. Goods depend, these days, mostly on automation which isn't going away. So little problem there. That leaves services. Yes, they depend entirely on human capital. So we're going to have to automate, train assistance animals, or use technology to do away with the need. Especially among the elderly who traditionally require more services.
  - 8y ago
stakhanov 8y ago
That's not just true of Japan it's true of pretty much any income tax system: Say you have a two person household consisting of person A and person B. First configuration: Person A engages in wealth creation by running the household, raising the children, etc. etc. That wealth-creation is tax-free since it's never paid for in monetary terms. Whatever time is left over can be spent doing jobs that don't demand fulltime status. Those jobs don't pay as much on an hourly basis, but that income will be very tax efficient as the total sum of money will be lower and therefore a larger proportion of it will end up in the lower income-tax bands. This frees up person B to do a fulltime job, maximizing income (albeit earned in a less tax-efficient way). Second configuration: Both person A and person B do a fulltime job, maximizing income. Now they both pay a lot of taxes, since the both earn a lot of money. They use some of the money left over after taxes to pay for a nanny, housekeeper, etc. In order for first and second configuration to "break even" the hourly rate for person A under the second configuration would have to be A LOT more than under the first configuration to make up for the added inefficiency in tax. My contention would be: It's pretty rare for both person A and person B to be able to earn so much under the second configuration so as to break even with the first configuration (as measured by hosehold disposable income, i.e. after taxes and everything).
- intopieces 8y ago
  >My contention would be: It's pretty rare for both person A and person B to be able to earn so much under the second configuration so as to break even with the first configuration (as measured by hosehold disposable income, i.e. after taxes and everything). This depends on your timescale. If you look at the tax returns of years 0-5, your contention will look spot on. If you compare the tax returns of two couples -- with double income in all years vs single income for years 0-5, you may find that in the long run, given the sacrifice involved in taking a career break for 5 years, it is in the favor of the couple to shell out in big in those 5 years.
  - mantas 8y ago
    That applies in very few careers. Many careers are reverse hockey stick and go flat soon. Loosing 5 years means you get to the same spot 5 years later. You loose only the difference for few years. Don't forget working also adds extra costs for commute, professional clothes, food at workplace etc. And then you got certain joys in raising kid on your own. Which can be translated into monetary scheme too - how much you have to earn extra to compensate for that by buying all sorts of shit (be it things or experiences)?
deogeo 8y ago
This article reads like a cruel joke. In a country with some of the longest working hours in the world, where people working themselves to death is a serious issue, where the birth rate is crashing, it's calling for even more work? A horrible perversion of feminism, that makes as much sense as calling for more women to be made homeless to bring them to parity with men. Anything is justified to "stimulate the economy" I guess.
- mantas 8y ago
  Anything has to go through economical system to raise GDP! Let's discourage people from cooking at home, having guests at home, spending time in public parks and forests or at home with their kids... GDP is happiness. /s just in case
lgleason 8y ago
None of this has anything to do with helping people. Instead it is about big soul less companies looking for more ways to get cheap labor. Things like family etc. are a distraction from that goal.
alkibiades 8y ago
why is the goal for women to work full time as if that in itself is some societal good? i want to live in a society where people don’t have to work full time
- Broken_Hippo 8y ago
  I, too, want to live in such a society. That said, I also don't want to live in a society where I have to stay home and do housework. I'd rather live in a society where a couple shares the household burdens, including housework, childcare, and outside work to pay bills - or have the choice to be independent of the other sex or have the choice to work outside the home and the man stays home to do that work. In that world, both sexes have to work. In our current times, folks have to work full time (whatever full time is). 40 hours a week it is until we can get that norm reduced, but that is a different issue entirely. ... even though it boggles the mind. You'd think if everyone works we could all work less. But reality seems to say otherwise right now.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

47 points by Ultramanoid 8y ago

eska 8y ago

I can't help but feel like this is a strong misinterpretation of the circumstances. The author tries really hard to make this a woman's issue, but as far as I know the law doesn't lay out different rules for women specifically, just the less-earning spouses that take care of the children, so the same problems exist for husbands that stay at home. However, women universally tend to not marry "down" when it comes to finances, education, etc., while men do. They also tend to find men without a career to be unambitious, which is generally considered to be an unattractive trait in men for romantic purposes. This is true for poor countries rife with sexism, as well as for rich countries that treat women and men equally. (All of this has been covered by extensive sutdies) In Japan in particular young women tend to have high expectations of men, because their parents and grandparents had no financial issues during the economic bubble and their mothers and grandmothers did not have to work at all or much. Many Japanese women can't wait to marry in order to start a family and stop working; it's their life goal and they only consider their career to be temporary from the start. This even true for most women who graduate from elite universities in Japan (I saw a study about Tokyo university graduates mentioning this). So that's why in practice we're talking about mostly women here and I wouldn't blame men for that. The argument about the time spent on housework also sounds rather weird and insignificant to me, because it mentions a significant gap between men and women, but also mentions that Japanese spend less time on housework in general. 263mins = 4h23m a week is a number that I pull off without trouble as a single man working full-time without the least bit of help from a spouse. The article also doesn't mention whether this number is limited to families with children or the whole population. The part about bento boxes is just a meme. Women are not considered to be bad mothers if they don't create bento boxes that look like Pikachu and friends. There are legitimate issues for women working in Japan, some of which we have in other countries, some we don't, but I don't see any of them in this article. All I see is "less-earning spouses (usually women) get too many benefits, that's why the alternative of working isn't attractive enough". And instead of complaining about beautiful bento boxes, the author should draw attention to serious issues like the incredible lack of kindergarden spots and the like.

mikekchar 8y ago
Just to agree with you on the bentou boxes. I worked in a high school for 5 years and often ate lunch with the students. Never once did I see an overly cute benou box :-) My wife makes my bentou box, but at that time I made hers. It takes about 20 minutes to make in the morning, but you have to be organised. Japanese people also tend to have a large, cooked morning meal (which my wife now makes, but when I was working at the school I made for her). For me, I'd often be cooking for about an hour every morning (including both breakfast and lunch), which meant getting up at about 6. Japanese people bathe at night, which frees up a bit of time. I don't want to understate the difficulty that women have in the workplace in Japan. The breakfast and lunch are manageable, but then you have to do laundry (and if you have school kids, it's a big job in Japan). People hang their laundry outside, so it's a problem if you aren't there to get it if it rains. You have to be back in time to cook dinner for your kids, but you have responsibilities to stay late at work most days, etc, etc. Some of my female colleagues barely slept and it just wasn't healthy. Distributing the workload is not so hard, but it needs a cultural shift. It's slowly happening though. You may note that my wife cooks for me now and wonder why... I liked doing breakfast and lunch, but I think my wife prefers doing it herself (my bentous aren't very good, I'll admit). I suspect (but don't know) that she also feels better, as a woman, if she does that job. That's a strange idea in western culture, but perhaps it will sound more understandable if I say that I feel better, as a man, if I make a salary. Stupid and arbitrary, but culture is like that sometimes. It's hard to change and you need to go slowly.
- eska 8y ago
  Thank you for your input, mikekchar. Even if anecdotal, it mirrors my experiences and what I hear from Japanese acquaintances as well. I agree that the cultural shift might just take more time, but is already happening. I see parallels to earlier developments in the west.
rayiner 8y ago
> The author tries really hard to make this a woman's issue, but as far as I know the law doesn't lay out different rules for women specifically, just the less-earning spouses that take care of the children, so the same problems exist for husbands that stay at home. The article doesn't claim that the law is intentionally discriminatory. It says that the law disincentivizes women to work, which can be true even if that is not the intent of the law. Stricter voter ID requirements don't facially discriminate between different groups, but they still have the effect of suppressing voting by minority groups because of how they interact with other social factors. And the underlying claim is an uncontroversial one in economics: tax or welfare benefits that phase out with higher incomes disincentivize work. That's a generic truth about economics. It just happens to be a "woman's issue" in this context because (1) women happen to disproportionately have the lower paying jobs, because of gender norms; and (2) Abe's government is trying to get more women in the workforce to deal with Japan's crushing labor shortage.

mikekchar 8y ago

Just for people who are new to the Japan Times, I should point out that this article is somehow in the "News" section, not the "Opinion" sections. How they can get away with saying, "If the government really wants to encourage women to work more, it should revoke the tax deduction framework." in a "news" piece without it being a quote, I have no idea, but this is absolutely typical of the Japan Times. I should also point out that the piece is full of misleading information used to bolster their argument. For example: "Prior to 2018, a person who made no more than ¥1.03 million a year in income did not have to pay income tax and could be claimed as a dependent on their spouse’s tax return, meaning a deduction of ¥380,000." This is completely dependent upon the spouse's salary. ¥1.03 million is about $10K, just in case you aren't familiar with the currency. A deduction of ¥380,000 is 38% -- which implies that the marginal tax rate of the spouse is %38 percent. This would be a huge salary for the spouse in Japanese terms. It's important to understand that personal income tax in Japan is very low. However, you have to pay a fixed 7% for pension and health coverage and another 5-10% for city and prefectural tax (depending on where you live). There are no deductions on pension, city and prefectural tax. Typically if you are paying an overall 30-35% tax rate, your personal income tax rate is only somewhere around 15-20%. Have a look here and scroll down to the personal tax rates: https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2206.html https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2206.html A 40% marginal tax rate starts at 18 million yen, or $180K. Yes, not so high in SV, but I don't know anyone where I live that makes this much as a salary. A more typical marginal tax rate is 15 or 20%. Like I said, this is typical for Japan Times "news" stories unfortunately. I feel odd saying this because while the piece is terrible, I actually agree with the idea of reducing dependent deductions and the need for more Japanese women to get positions in permanent positions in Japan.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

throwaway2w09 8y ago

I would like to know when, if ever, we will be able to have a conversation on HN about whether women working (i.e. working outside rather than raising a family) is an absolute unquestionable good thing. Surely we can't complain about falling birth rates at the same time that we complain about we don't have enough women working? Japan particularly wants to avoid the elephant in the room.

SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
Who's complaining about falling birth rates? The planet is overpopulated, fewer humans can only be a good thing.
- throwaway2w09 8y ago
  The Japanese government for one. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-47127738 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-47127738 They already have more pensioners than children being born. The same trend can be seen in virtually every single developed country. We are soon to going to not be able to afford to pay these pensioners if there are not enough people paying taxes. Hopefully you don't actually think pensions are somehow grown on trees.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    Ha! Its only hyperbole if it isn't true. Paper money grows on trees! Yes, we can print the money and the world won't end. There's not some automatic hyper-inflation that happens when money is minted. There's so much around already you see. Think of cash as points in a game. If we keep playing games, racking up points, the points don't necessarily become worthless. They may change a little as confidence varies. It's not about the imaginary points. Its about the goods and services. Goods depend, these days, mostly on automation which isn't going away. So little problem there. That leaves services. Yes, they depend entirely on human capital. So we're going to have to automate, train assistance animals, or use technology to do away with the need. Especially among the elderly who traditionally require more services.
- 8y ago

stakhanov 8y ago

That's not just true of Japan it's true of pretty much any income tax system: Say you have a two person household consisting of person A and person B. First configuration: Person A engages in wealth creation by running the household, raising the children, etc. etc. That wealth-creation is tax-free since it's never paid for in monetary terms. Whatever time is left over can be spent doing jobs that don't demand fulltime status. Those jobs don't pay as much on an hourly basis, but that income will be very tax efficient as the total sum of money will be lower and therefore a larger proportion of it will end up in the lower income-tax bands. This frees up person B to do a fulltime job, maximizing income (albeit earned in a less tax-efficient way). Second configuration: Both person A and person B do a fulltime job, maximizing income. Now they both pay a lot of taxes, since the both earn a lot of money. They use some of the money left over after taxes to pay for a nanny, housekeeper, etc. In order for first and second configuration to "break even" the hourly rate for person A under the second configuration would have to be A LOT more than under the first configuration to make up for the added inefficiency in tax. My contention would be: It's pretty rare for both person A and person B to be able to earn so much under the second configuration so as to break even with the first configuration (as measured by hosehold disposable income, i.e. after taxes and everything).

intopieces 8y ago
>My contention would be: It's pretty rare for both person A and person B to be able to earn so much under the second configuration so as to break even with the first configuration (as measured by hosehold disposable income, i.e. after taxes and everything). This depends on your timescale. If you look at the tax returns of years 0-5, your contention will look spot on. If you compare the tax returns of two couples -- with double income in all years vs single income for years 0-5, you may find that in the long run, given the sacrifice involved in taking a career break for 5 years, it is in the favor of the couple to shell out in big in those 5 years.
- mantas 8y ago
  That applies in very few careers. Many careers are reverse hockey stick and go flat soon. Loosing 5 years means you get to the same spot 5 years later. You loose only the difference for few years. Don't forget working also adds extra costs for commute, professional clothes, food at workplace etc. And then you got certain joys in raising kid on your own. Which can be translated into monetary scheme too - how much you have to earn extra to compensate for that by buying all sorts of shit (be it things or experiences)?

deogeo 8y ago

This article reads like a cruel joke. In a country with some of the longest working hours in the world, where people working themselves to death is a serious issue, where the birth rate is crashing, it's calling for even more work? A horrible perversion of feminism, that makes as much sense as calling for more women to be made homeless to bring them to parity with men. Anything is justified to "stimulate the economy" I guess.

mantas 8y ago
Anything has to go through economical system to raise GDP! Let's discourage people from cooking at home, having guests at home, spending time in public parks and forests or at home with their kids... GDP is happiness. /s just in case

lgleason 8y ago

None of this has anything to do with helping people. Instead it is about big soul less companies looking for more ways to get cheap labor. Things like family etc. are a distraction from that goal.

alkibiades 8y ago

why is the goal for women to work full time as if that in itself is some societal good? i want to live in a society where people don’t have to work full time

Broken_Hippo 8y ago
I, too, want to live in such a society. That said, I also don't want to live in a society where I have to stay home and do housework. I'd rather live in a society where a couple shares the household burdens, including housework, childcare, and outside work to pay bills - or have the choice to be independent of the other sex or have the choice to work outside the home and the man stays home to do that work. In that world, both sexes have to work. In our current times, folks have to work full time (whatever full time is). 40 hours a week it is until we can get that norm reduced, but that is a different issue entirely. ... even though it boggles the mind. You'd think if everyone works we could all work less. But reality seems to say otherwise right now.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]