[HN Gopher] Japan's Hometown Tax (2018) ___________________________________________________________________ Japan's Hometown Tax (2018) Author : harporoeder Score : 288 points Date : 2022-04-25 09:48 UTC (13 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.kalzumeus.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.kalzumeus.com) | [deleted] | incomingpain wrote: | Japan is writing the economic textbooks. Tremendous government | debt, nearly 100% total tax burden. Quantitative easing will tend | to target entities in say Tokyo. It creates an imbalance that | will only get worse as people move to Tokyo to get some of that | QE. Negative interest rates, they basically are giving away free | money so that the economy doesn't blow up in a deflationary death | spiral. This imbalance to then be fixed comes in form of another | tax? The hometown tax? | | Worse yet, the government debt to gdp is still increasing. Debt | still going up and up because they havent balanced the budget | since the early 90s. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades | | Japan has lost 3 decades so far because of high taxes and high | debt. You can't default on the debt, it's your own people who own | the debt. Defaulting would mean your elderly have to go back to | work. Yet it's worse... Japan has a major silver crime issue and | well unspoken probable slave labour problem. | | The fix for Japan is so simple yet for 30 years nobody has been | willing to do it. | [deleted] | ascar wrote: | > nearly 100% total tax burden. | | What kind of number is this? The debt to GDP is actually more | than 200% and you will find the US also above 100%. So yes | Japan has a big debt problem, but what metric are you using? | | > Yet it's worse... Japan has a major silver crime issue and | well unspoken probable slave labour problem. | | Do you have any source for that? I don't know about silver | crime, but the globalslaveryindex ranks Japan as literally the | lowest country (167/167 [1]), 4 times better than the US and | more than 6 times better than a few European countries I looked | up like Germany, Austria, France or UK. | | > The fix for Japan is so simple yet for 30 years nobody has | been willing to do it. | | If it's so easy, why don't you at least enlighten us instead of | just stating it's easy? | | [1] https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/data/country- | data/ja... | incomingpain wrote: | >What kind of number is this? The debt to GDP is actually | more than 200% and you will find the US also above 100%. So | yes Japan has a big debt problem, but what metric are you | using? | | Governments like to split up taxes and tax different things. | Middle east generally has no personal income tax or even a | corporate tax. Yet you can't say the middle east has no | taxes. | | You have to analyze 'total tax burden' but you also can't | allow even more tricks like progressive taxes making it | apples/oranges. | | Japan has one of the highest personal taxes in the world at | 55%. You work for the government 6 months of the year. | | When you analyze total tax burden properly. There's only a | few countries in the world whose taxes are near 100%. | Basically Japanese people work for the government the entire | year and don't realize it. The government sure doesn't | provide everything for them to live. | | >Do you have any source for that? I don't know about silver | crime, | | Something like this: | https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/20/poverty- | ageing-j... | | Basically in population declines or situations like world war | 2 countries are currently in or soon to be in. Effectively | elderly retirees are forced to go back to work. They let | their skills expire. They take an ego hit being forced to | work a mcjob. So they steal instead. This wasn't even | marginally the problem it will be. It's something that's set | it stone. | | >but the globalslaveryindex ranks Japan as literally the | lowest country (167/167 [1]), 4 times better than the US and | more than 6 times better than a few European countries I | looked up like Germany, Austria, France or UK. | | That's literally impossible. Answer me 2 things that will | tell me if it's the lowest slavery in the world. | | 1. What is the criminal conviction rate in Japan? | | 2. Is there penal labour in Japan? | | >If it's so easy, why don't you at least enlighten us instead | of just stating it's easy? | | Well I touched on it. total tax burden being at 100% means | you cant raise taxes. | | Balancing the budget is step #1. Figure out all the positive | rights that need reducing or cancelling. End abenomics asap. | Balanced budget amendment to the constitution. | | Massively increase immigration in order to dilute tax cost or | debt/capita. Not sure how that'll work but probably also a | later disaster for japan. 1 problem at a time. | | Probably need to build a free trade zone. Massive increase in | tourism needed. Probably will need a massive amount of | deregulation that will blow your mind. | | Now you have to deal with the consequences of the above | options. They aren't good. Probably going to be ~25% | unemployment. Probably about 4% poverty. GDP contraction of | -5%/year for several years. Depression level disaster to be | sure. | | Yet this depression is far less painful than Japan's current | path. | hedora wrote: | Here's a nifty sortable table of tax revenue as percentage | of GDP: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_reve | n... | | Japan's is 38.4%. Eyeballing their position in the table | suggests they're 66th percentile. (The US is at 38.1%; | Germany is Europe's economic powerhouse, and is at 43.9%) | dragonwriter wrote: | > When you analyze total tax burden properly. There's only | a few countries in the world whose taxes are near 100%. | | Define "properly", paying particular attention to | explaining why the standard "revenue/GDP" method is wrong, | and show your supporting data for Japan being near 100%. | iso1210 wrote: | > total tax burden being at 100% means you cant raise | taxes. | | You still haven't explained what this means. The Japanese | tax to GDP ratio is 31%, below the OECD average | | https://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/revenue-statistics- | japan... | | Japan spends 38% of its GDP, about the same as the US does. | | To balance the budget the government would thus have to | take 38% of GDP. That would put it in the same range as | Germany, Norway, Netherlands, and way below Italy, Sweden, | Denmark, France, | LatteLazy wrote: | Full disclosure: I am a londoner and this is basically how our | tax system works except without any of the optionality. | | I am not at all convinced that towns have a claim to the tax | revenue of people who don't use it's services. The fact regions | can force this onto Tokyo etc is a failure of democracy, not a | success. We're living in a time when Cities work, and bigger | cities work better than smaller ones. They're cheaper, greener, | have better social outcomes, provide more opportunities etc. And | the response is to try to starve them of revenue to maintain some | strange tradition life of worse health, poorer people, less | equality and more pollution. | | /rant | numpad0 wrote: | It's insanely corrupt. Up to 40% of your taxable income can be | paid as Furusato nozei, and you get kickback in the form of a | "thank you gift"(30% value). | | The parts about hometowns are almost irrelevant, as each | donations are one time transactions. | | If this isn't scheme of a fraud I don't know what is one. | LukeShu wrote: | > Up to 40% of your taxable income can be paid as Furusato | nozei | | No, 4% of your taxable income. There's a 10% residence tax on | your taxable income, and 40% _of that 10%_ can be paid as | Furusato Nouzei. | rocqua wrote: | How is this how the UK tax system works? | | Do you simply mean that the counties get most of their income, | not from local tax but from national tax? This then counts as | 'stealing from the city' because most of the national income is | created by the city? | imtringued wrote: | I think this is amusing because a lot of those cities are | stealing jobs so it is only fair for them to pay. | settrans wrote: | I never understood this attitude (assuming it's serious). | If a job is created in a city that wouldn't exist in the | country, where is the stealing? To me this sounds like the | city is creating value _ex nihilo_, and the "payment" here | is an orthogonal, collectivist redistribution. | rayiner wrote: | There is a time skew between use of government services and | when you pay back with taxes. Why shouldn't a city that paid to | educate a kid from age 5 to 18 not receive some of the tax | revenue when that kid uses that education to get a job in | Tokyo? | traceroute66 wrote: | > except without any of the optionality | | Or the reciprocal gifts, or .... | | I'm not entirely sure it is "basically how" the London/UK tax | system works ? Perhaps you could elaborate. | | Local government is ultimately funded by central government, | which is (as we've seen from the present UK government) subject | to political whims as to who gets what and how much (Tories | favouring Tory seats/councils). | | I suspect you might have Council Tax in mind, but I'm not | entirely convinced that is "basically the same thing" either. | stdbrouw wrote: | The purpose of the hometown tax is wealth transfer to less | populated, poorer regions. In that sense, the reciprocal | gifts etc. are just a funny implementation detail. | jonwachob91 wrote: | People in cities still need rural towns for farming and related | agriculture production. Maybe in 20 or 50 years most farming | will be automated, but until then lets not lose sight that big | cities are dependent on those rural towns with "strange | tradition life of worse health, poorer people, less equality | and more pollution" | formerkrogemp wrote: | Vertical farming and recirculating aquaculture could | revolutionize food production in wealthy nations. Remote work | and high housing costs could slow the urbanization trends | somewhat. | jonwachob91 wrote: | My understanding of vertical farming is that the only thing | they've succeeded in growing in leafy greens. | imtringued wrote: | Vertical farming requires nuclear fusion. What's your | schedule for that? | | Seriously, why exactly are we throwing away free solar | resources only to have to generate them through some other | method that is much harder? | LatteLazy wrote: | Everyone needs everyone else for the goods and services they | provide. We pay farmers for the food they grown when they buy | it. We pay them again with farm subsidies. Do we really need | to pay a third time with town subsidies? | modo_mario wrote: | As far as I know here in Belgium most of the factory work | also happens far from the big cities. | | >We pay farmers for the food they grown when they buy it. | We pay them again with farm subsidies. Do we really need to | pay a third time with town subsidies? | | Not allowing them to be squeezed so much by oversized | supermarketchains and the like would probably do more | causi wrote: | Did you miss this part? | | _To the extent that taxpayers donate to their hometowns, Tokyo | no longer freerides on the substantial public expenditures | required to raise and educate internal migrants._ | | The cost to raise a child to adulthood in Japan is around | $300,000. That's quite significant. | jefftk wrote: | Your $300k includes costs paid by the parents, though, but in | this case we only care about government costs. | causi wrote: | _but in this case we only care about government costs_ | | Why? Raising a child is a six-figure investment of money | that doesn't go somewhere else. Every expenditure that | doesn't immediately go back into the local economy like | food is wasted when a person leaves. That fraction of a tax | is probably never going to equal what the hometown spent on | things like education it will receive no return on. | LatteLazy wrote: | I think it's very weak logic. | | First, even if someone actually paid the 300k it takes to | raise a child, that doesn't mean that person owns the adult. | | And second, who is paying that? Education (in Japan and the | UK) is primarily funded at a national level. So Tokyo/London, | have already contributed significantly to the cost of that | person's education (and to the education of plenty of people | who will never move there to work). And most of the costs of | raising kids are paid either by parents or at a national | level. | | It seems to me this is just post hoc justification for taking | resources out of productive areas that need them and sending | them to unproductive areas that don't. That might be | "democratic" if there are a lot of unproductive areas. But it | isn't fair or efficient or effective. And it will soak up | resources better spent helping people who actually need | them... | lozenge wrote: | Yes, Lexit! London should declare independence from the UK. | Then it won't need to maintain all that inefficient non- | megacity infrastructure. | imtringued wrote: | It won't have to pay to maintain the roads between the city | and the farms. What a bargain! | FooBarBizBazz wrote: | This argument, against redistribution from cities to rural | areas of a country, seems to also apply against aid from rich | countries to poor ones. In both cases, there are less- | expensive, less-"developed" places where it is possible to have | a family and raise children; richer, more-developed places | where all the jobs are; and a flow of people from the former to | the latter. These might be called "core" and "periphery". | imtringued wrote: | The obvious solution would be to introduce a negative | interest rate on cash so that rich city dwellers cannot | accumulate massive trade surpluses against small towns which | then means people don't have to move out of town to get a | job. | | It's quite tiring to see all these "faux" free market | advocates or liberals, while they do absolutely nothing to | actually get closer to the impossible ideal. They see the | free as in free beer, i.e. reducing "government intervention" | to let special interest groups get away with shady behavior | instead of addressing known conflict sources and making | control over them irrelevant. | modo_mario wrote: | >I am not at all convinced that towns have a claim to the tax | revenue of people who don't use it's services. | | The article mentions such a service tho. Education. On the | other hand I don't think the support for those early years | amount to 40% of ones paycheck but not everyone participates | so... | | >worse health | | How so? I would think it is the opposite based on studies about | allergy prevalence, etc | | >less equality | | I don't think this is a constant either. I'm curious to see a | broad study but if there's ever places i've seen stark wealth | divides to slap one in the face it's been big cities. | | That said as towns person I still agree that the move to cities | is not a bad thing especially if we wish to preserve more | nature and so is the push for it. I also think this continuous | urbanisation will help their or our birthrates but the world | population can't and shouldn't grow endlessly. | LukeShu wrote: | > amount to 40% of ones paycheck | | 3.2% of one's paycheck. 40% of the residence tax, which the | article asserts is about 8% of one's pre-tax salary; | 40%x8%=3.2%. | [deleted] | namovat wrote: | What stupid thing is this | Arn_Thor wrote: | An incredibly cool, inventive and awesome system! And somehow | quintessentially Japanese too. Lovely writeup. | tomatowurst wrote: | This is essentially equalization payments, it's not at all | unique to Japan. Even Canada does it. | boomboomsubban wrote: | Wasn't 2008 roughly the start of the "every town has a mascot" | trend in Japan? I wonder if this law helped is part of the reason | pushing that trend. | resoluteteeth wrote: | I don't think there is any particular connection | skhr0680 wrote: | I think the modern mascots are inspired by Hikonyan (2007) | boomboomsubban wrote: | A mascot existing wouldn't inspire towns to invest resources | in developing their own. Sure, they mah have had some hopes | that it would lead to similar merchandizing sales or tourism | growth, but that dream likely died quickly. | | A cute character regularly reminding people of their home to | take advantage of this tax makes more sense to me. | resoluteteeth wrote: | Even though the furusato nozei system was originally | created around the same time as local mascots started to | become popular in 2008, there wasn't competition from | municipalities to try to attract donations until around | 2016. | | Mascot characters like Kumamon, which were created after | 2008 but before the furusato nozei system really started | attracting attention, were specifically created to attract | tourism, not to attract donations. | | So even though it might seem that the timing would match | up, it's not really true that there is a connection. | | Furthermore, when municipalities started trying to compete | for donations, they didn't use mascots, they just started | bribing people with return gifts. Maybe in theory | municipalities could have used mascots to try to attract | donations, but in reality they don't seem to have done | that. | Hamuko wrote: | There's an ongoing study into furusato nozei in Finland. However, | they've apparently decided to axe the tax rebate aspect of the | system, so it's basically only going to amount to a municipal | marketplace ("donate" money, get goods in return). | | https://www.epressi.com/tiedotteet/maaseutu/japanin-kotiseut... | xunn0026 wrote: | Needs a (2018). I knew I read it and wondered if there's anything | new here? | [deleted] | benou wrote: | Looks similar to Equalization payments [1] already used in | several places in the world. | | It looks to me that this being organized by the state should be | more fair and efficient, but the additional "local connection" | you get is a nice touch though. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equalization_payments | azernik wrote: | With a big difference: | | Instead of the state deciding how much to equalize and who the | recipients should be, rich cities preempted that and set their | own equalization contributions unilaterally. In the process, | instead of deciding on the equalization recipients through any | political process or deliberation, they opened that decision up | to individual taxpayers. | cool_dude85 wrote: | And apparently some search engine intermediary gets to take a | cut for making the proverbial website. Sounds way efficient, | good job to the free market of choice on this one. | erwincoumans wrote: | Omoshiroi! This is a really nice write up. Education is indeed | very expensive and the towns outside of Tokyo have difficulties | surviving, with only older people remaining there. Those towns | have to be very creative to attract money and people. You can get | a house for free, if you will live there, similar to some Italian | towns. | | In the Netherlands we have similar issue of towns fighting for | survival in more rural parts (Limburg). They try to combine | schools of several towns to reduce the cost of teachers, and | similar combining police stations. | | Lowering the friction for such 'gift tax' is interesting, | Japanese are big into all kind of little gifts: if you go on | holiday you bring something small, an Omiage. If you attend a | birthday party, not only you bring a present (which is usual | everywhere) but the guest also get a little gift in return, an | Okaeshi. | Semaphor wrote: | The article generated a big discussion at the time (254 | comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18256660 | coobird wrote: | Actually, many city governments in Japan already get a | redistribution from the national government in "local tax | allocation" to the tune of over 100 billion USD every year, and | cities like Tokyo with a large tax base or industry are excluded | from this. Then there's "hometown tax" so local municipalities in | Tokyo and the surrounding areas are losing local tax revenue. | | I suspect a that many are not aware that taxes destined for the | local government they live ("residence tax") in gets diverted to | other cities, especially because many salaried workers don't do | their own taxes, as was mentioned in the article. It's gotten to | the point that some cities were running public service | announcements saying that "donating through hometown tax leads to | loss of local tax revenues" and saying funding for services like | city-run daycare can be at risk. | | In 2021, Tokyo "lost" about 400 million USD in tax revenue to | this program, so it's not a trivial amount. | 1270018080 wrote: | Well... I can say I am glad America doesn't have this. | caseyross wrote: | (2018) | | Discussed at the time: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18256660 | helen___keller wrote: | > This counsels that a young person born and educated in e.g. | Gifu move to Tokyo after graduation to earn a living. > Many, | many do. While Japan's overall population is declining, Tokyo's | increases by about 100,000 people per year. | | Notably this differs from America in that rent acts as a natural | counterbalance here. It's not common knowledge that a university | graduate should move to New York or San Francisco, in fact if you | aren't in a top paying field it's probably common knowledge that | one should not move to these cities. | | I wonder how much different the population landscape of the | United States would look like if NYC, the Bay Area, LA etc had | ever figured out how to plan for urban growth in the same way | Tokyo did (context: you can afford a small single family home on | a middle class income in Tokyo, I think prices there are around | 30% over other Japanese cities) | MengerSponge wrote: | Someone who knows more about Japanese culture and tax policy | needs to weigh in, but my understanding is that housing is | typically not considered a long-term investment vehicle, to the | point that houses are expected to be demolished after some | number of decades and depreciated accordingly. | | This mindset prevents an established base of property owners | from blocking subsequent development, resulting in their | property values skyrocketing. | | America might have a chance of fixing this with national-level | zoning, which will never happen as long as current political | alliances are the way they are. | BurningFrog wrote: | I suspect the causality is reversed: | | Housing is not considered a long-term investment _because_ | demolition and new construction is easy. | asciimike wrote: | Really good article on zoning in Japan: | http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese- | zoning.html | | I think it's a bit of both, it's not viewed as as much of | an investment therefore zoning laws are lax, which mean | that housing can't become an investment because anyone can | build (up to) anything on a lot. | Tiktaalik wrote: | I think the tax code even incentivizes demolition in that | the taxes for sales of bare land versus land with a | structure on it are less. | MengerSponge wrote: | My instinct is that the causal arrow begins with | earthquakes and disposable (timber-based) building | practices, which keep housing/structures from being viewed | as stable long-term vehicles | astrange wrote: | Japanese houses are low quality (they have single pane | windows, no insulation at all, and no central heat | because they think it builds character). But they're no | more timber based than US houses are, and there's nothing | overly temporary about building a house out of wood, | especially new forms like CLT. | xxpor wrote: | So why didnt California end up in that state, concidering | it has nearly the same conditions? | MengerSponge wrote: | That's a very good question. Probably because modern | California was settled by European colonizers, who | brought their traditional construction and property | practices with them? | | I'd love to see a sociologist's analysis of the ring of | fire, though. If anyone knows of someone who isn't just | talking out their butt (like me), please drop a rec | quartesixte wrote: | >That's a very good question. Probably because modern | California was settled by European colonizers, who | brought their traditional construction and property | practices with them? | | Like lawns! Like California is the completely wrong state | for lawns. | ac29 wrote: | California is seismically active, but not like Japan: htt | ps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/EQs_1900 | ... | [deleted] | csours wrote: | Point taken, but young people still move to larger regional | towns. You may move to Houston, Atlanta, Kansas City, etc for | economic reasons. | SapporoChris wrote: | One of the reasons for the immigration is while Tokyo is an | expensive city, its costs can be compensated with a tiny | apartment. However, it's not necessary to live in Tokyo. Many | of the surrounding cities commute to Tokyo on a daily basis. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo#Demographics "During the | daytime, the population swells by over 2.5 million as workers | and students commute from adjacent areas. This effect is even | more pronounced in the three central wards of Chiyoda, Chuo, | and Minato, whose collective population as of the 2005 National | Census was 326,000 at night, but 2.4 million during the | day.[91]" | golemiprague wrote: | lovemenot wrote: | Kalzumeus spoke about "Tokyo" to represent Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya | and other large regional cities. | | As you might expect, these Tokyo-like cities are much more | expensive at their centre than at their periphery. | Nevertheless, I imagine your eyes may water when you find out | just how much more so. I only know one of these cities well, | and to be fair only in land values not in rentals. | | In absolute amounts, Tokyo itself is of course more unequal | than smaller big cities. But the relative value distribution is | perhaps fairly consistent across Tokyo-like cities. | | Within Tokyo-city, very central regions (Minato-ku) are valued | at 4X over central urban districts (Nakano-ku), which in turn, | are 8X more expensive to buy than the least valuable outer- | Tokyo districts (Hachioji-shi). So there's a 32X differential | in land values within that city's borders. | | Now, let's zoom out from the city itself. Within just a few | hours drive or rail journey, we can easily get to 300X land | values: $300 in Minato buys the same area of land worth around | $1 in a fairly central district of a fairly large town in | Nagano. Parts of mountains obviously go for much cheaper than | land in these towns, but I don't have good market data for | that. My guess is a further 5X - 10X. | | Undoubtedly, it is more than 1,000 times, and perhaps sometimes | as much as 10,000X, more expensive to buy a plot of land in | Japan, than another plot of the same size just 500Km - 1,000Km | away. | | One may reasonably dispute these figures in detail. I did try | to be conservative. Nevertheless, they are certainly right in | the order of magnitude. | | Getting back to your point, I would say that in spite of the | wonderful societal benefits of world-class transportation | within and between cities, if the goal was to achieve ball-park | economic parity across the regions then that policy in Japan | has been a failure. Income & expenditure? Sure ... all of Japan | looks pretty consistent. Property valuation? ... the | discrepancy is almost unfathomable. | paulmd wrote: | That sounds like a lot, but 32x is probably less than the | differential in the US between downtown manhattan and | suburban Jersey or Delaware, and of course there's a whole | rural level in the US far below that as well. | | That said, the whole "tokyo is just turbo-expensive!" thing | is, in the broad strokes, generally false. Buying land in | high-density commercial districts is going to be expensive, | just like if you wanted to build a detached single-family | home in downtown manhattan, but to put some hard numbers to | it: | | In September 2020, the average listing price for a newly | constructed detached wooden house in Tokyo of between 100-sqm | and 300-sqm (1,076 sqft and 3,229 sqft) was: | | https://resources.realestate.co.jp/news/how-much-does-it- | cos... | | > Greater Tokyo Area: Y=36,850,000 ($354,000) | | > Tokyo (23 Wards + Western Suburbs): Y=42,880,000 ($412,000) | | > Tokyo 23 Wards: Y=59,410,000 ($570,000) | | > Tokyo western suburbs: Y=40,110,000 ($385,000) | | -- | | > For July to September 2020, the average sales price for a | previously owned detached house in Tokyo was: | | > Tokyo (23 Wards + Western Suburbs): Y=46,150,000 ($443,000) | | -This was a year-on-year increase of 5.5% and an increase of | 14.6% compared to the April to June period, when sales | dropped sharply due to coronavirus social distancing | measures. | | -This was also the highest average sales price since the July | to September (3rd quarter) 2018 period of Y=47,020,000. | | > Tokyo 23 Wards: Y=57,170,000 ($549,000) | | -This was a year-on-year increase of 5.7% and an increase of | 15.8% compared to the April to June period. | | -This was also the highest average sales price since the July | to September (3rd quarter) 2018 period of Y=57,170,000. | | > Tokyo Western Suburbs: Y=32,730,000 ($319,000) | | -This was a year-on-year increase of 10.1% and an increase of | 5.7% compared to the April to June period. | | -- | | Honestly those prices aren't bad at all for "the densest | metropolis in the world", especially considering the | excellent transportation and other infrastructure that remove | the need for cars (and they have cheap healthcare/etc by US | standards as well). That is for 1k-3k sq-ft detached family | homes, so that's not $300k for a shoebox, that's $300k for an | average home by western standards. Undoubtedly some | difference in materials/etc but it's not uncommon to see | houses going for $750k-1m in 2nd-tier or 3rd-tier tech cities | in the city proper and $500k+ on the outskirts. | | The bigger factor, by US standards, is that salaries are much | lower, obviously that is a much bigger number if you're | making $50k a year at the peak of your career, but again, | with US housing prices generally being 2-4x japanese prices, | it probably ends up being similar-ish. | | I have a friend that was subletting a room who got the boot | because the owner was selling, got $750k for an average | single-family home in a second-tier or third-tier city with | insane tax rates. | smcl wrote: | TIL my 69m^2 flat in a mid-sized Central European city is | "worth" broadly the same as a larger house in the Greater | Tokyo area :-O | JohnWhigham wrote: | This is what can be accomplished with a homogeneous society. | The US is too multicultural and has too many competing | interests (both people and companies) for something like this | to even be _thought_ of. | kryptiskt wrote: | Tokyo had tremendously expensive real estate before the 80s | bubble burst, so I wonder if it's the result of wise planning | as much as the outcome of the 30 years of stagnation. | burlesona wrote: | According to one study US GDP would be 9% higher if SF, LA, and | NYC made room. They estimate NYC would grow to 40 million | people. | | https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388 | | Originally found via: https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the- | housing-theory-of-e... | no_butterscotch wrote: | It may be good that they don't make room then. | | I wonder if the US would just become a group of 3 or 4 large | sprawling city-states. | kitten_mittens_ wrote: | This comment reminds me of https://www.theonion.com/new- | study-finds-most-of-earth-s-lan.... | mactrey wrote: | Isn't it weird to use the word "sprawling" here? A world | where major cities are affordable would be _more dense_. It | would be _easier_ to preserve land for its natural beauty. | The US today is sprawling. | SllX wrote: | SFBA (maybe w/ Sacramento Area and Monterey Bay Area), | Greater LA, Seattle Area, Portland+Vancouver and that's | just the West Coast. Add in the 4+ in Texas, two or three | different parts of Florida and we haven't even touched on | the Northeast or Midwest still. | | Nah, the US would not become merely 3 or 4 large sprawling | City-States. For all of us city dwellers, there's plenty | that want nothing to do with anything that resembles a | City. | ghaff wrote: | Note that _parts_ of somewhere like NYC are extremely | expensive. Of course, those are the large parts of Manhattan | and parts of Brooklyn where young professionals want to live. | Other boroughs can be significantly less expensive but it 's | not what most professionals mean when they think NYC. Of | course, the general point applies. If you're talking about a | lower income job you can get just about anywhere, moving to | many big cities isn't a great financial decision. | Linda703 wrote: | Gordonjcp wrote: | "And then some bureaucrat realized that this created a market: | you, as a city government, can bid for taxpayers to select you as | a hometown." | | This is the most Neal Stephenson thing I have read all morning. | EE84M3i wrote: | Disclaimer: IANAL, IANATA, this isn't tax advice, etc | | Foreigners residing in Japan are eligible to participate in | furusato nouzei, but Americans might want to note the following | clause in the section "Tax Must Be the Legal and Actual Foreign | Tax Liability" in Publication 514 Foreign Tax Credit for | Individuals[1], which states: | | >Subsidy received. Tax payments a foreign country returns to you | in the form of a subsidy do not qualify for the foreign tax | credit. | | >The term "subsidy" includes any type of benefit. Some ways of | providing a subsidy are refunds, credits, deductions, payments, | or discharges of obligations. | | Whether or not furusato nouzei falls under this clause seems to | be up for some debate, and AFAIK the IRS hasn't made a public | determination on it either way. I don't risk it, but I am under | the impression there are some that do. | | Alternatively, the furusato nouzei portion could be not included | in the tax credit? But would it be worthwhile...? Sounds like it | depends on the situation and frankly seems like a lot of work to | get a few gift baskets. | | [1]: https://www.irs.gov/publications/p514#idm139978451112272 | Hello71 wrote: | is it common to need to take the FTC on residence taxes? my | understanding is that US federal income taxes are lower than | most foreign taxes, and skimming the Japanese personal income | tax brackets, it seems to be slightly higher than US federal | income taxes (ignoring deductions). | chrischen wrote: | Gift baskets is just what you opt for if you don't want a cash | equivalent gift card. | seanmcdirmid wrote: | Oh man, this is so confusing, and affects any American | citizen/PR living abroad. In China, there are a bunch of weird | kickbacks on your paycheck (e.g. public medical insurance cash | benefit) that you have to be careful to document as income on | your American tax return. And the whole mess of dealing with | social security taxes. | jollybean wrote: | Now imagine this playing out on a global scale. Canada grabs a | ton of doctors from developing nations. US grabs tons of Canada's | best home grown talent for whatever economic purposes. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-25 23:01 UTC)