Speaking as a Japanese-American who has some insight to what's going on: This is just Japanese resisting external demands to get with the times. Sending out in

Speaking as a Japanese-American who has some insight to what's going on: This is just Japanese resisting external demands to get with the times. Sending out invoices and paying sales tax to the government as a business is just a part of conducting business in the rest of the world; most of the Japanese resisting this are doing so because they are annoyed at the extra workload keeping track of numbers (they don't know what an invoice even is) and because literally nobody likes paying taxes. As for why the Japanese government is pursuing this, the simple answer is they need more taxes coming in to offset deficit spending. It's also worth noting the big businesses aren't complaining, because they already handle invoices simply as a part of doing business anyway. In particular, any business with international customers need to handle invoices, regardless of size, because the rest of the world demands invoices. I have no sympathy for Japanese folks who are against this, they need to get into the 20th century. If they're selling something they pay taxes on those sales.