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Japan's Public Finance and the Dogmas of Neo-Liberalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

N. Jinno  and
Ben Middleton
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If the only certainties in life are death and taxes, in recent years struggles over tax policy and tax reform in Japan have become fierce indeed.

At the heart of the struggle is the bleak situation of Japan's public finances. The downside of attempts to revive the moribund post-bubble economy through fiscal stimuli (public works spending and tax cuts) is that in 2007 government gross debt soared to 179% of GDP. This is the highest level ever recorded in the OECD area. (OECD Economic Survey of Japan, April 2008). The near doubling of social security payments since the early 1990s as the population rapidly ages has only aggravated the situation. Further, in fiscal 2007, taxes accounted for just 64.5% of total revenues, with 30% of total revenues coming from issues of government bonds. This substantially increases future liabilities.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 6 , Issue 7 , July 2008 , e22
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2008