Kyoto to introduce Japan's 1st empty homes tax

this J givet soaking up tax money anywhere they can get it and proving zero relief for lower wages. Why don't you just kill the entire economy now?

One of the reasons that the country is littered with abandoned houses and fields is that many people are declining to inherit property because of the amount of taxes they would have to pay.

They literally can't give away abandoned houses in Japan.

Instead promoting growth it just try to give create new tax, it looks that the city try to avoid again from bankruptcy in the future.

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3165103/will-kyoto-go-bankrupt-japans-ancient-capital-swims-debt

The historical city has strict building regulations to preserve its landscape

You would never imagine that with the number of dreadful buildings that have been thrown up there in the past 50 years. Obviously they are not strict enough.

Good they will exempt machiya now they have some economic value. When I lived in Kyoto in the 80s we could see these destroyed every day to be replaced by car parks for 5 cars or so.

Tax on second home and holiday let but not empty houses and ¥ 939,000 is too high. The city lost money during the pandemic from no tourists but the mayor of Kyoto wanted fewer tourists too.

You don't pay tax on unoccupied houses but you do on the land if the house is demolished.

I wish we could tax the government.

That would fix them.

Look, you simply can’t only enjoy all those nice but unnecessary things like Olympics , G7, JSDF engagement in Africa or anywhere, ordering sophisticated defense systems, JAXA rocket starts and space exploration , humanitarian help to Ukraine and a lot more, but now complaining that it suddenly costs something and tax have to be significantly raised for those expensive hobbies.

I even pay ¥5,000 pa tax on my garden shed.

So as long as it is listed as a rental or a for sale the tax will be lower? nice to know

@proxy

property taxes, ridiculous saving interest, you can't lay back for a second, it almost feels like the whole system is designed to keep people working forever

Kyoto to introduce Japan's 1st empty homes tax

I'm surprised that nay of the j-gov haven't begun to tax the homeless as well. Or pets or kids or insects for that matter.

used several times a year as a vacation home, would attract an annual tax bill of roughly 939,000 yen.

so it is being used, but you have to pay?

ive been looking for a second house for about a year, an empty one, free or very cheap. Hard to find. Now with tax…impossible

The idea is to get the owners to rent their buildings or sell them so they are occupied instead of being abandoned and boarded up. Empty buildings attract vandals, squatters and become a source of problems for the police and emergency services. Many US cities have been using vacant building taxes to coax the owners of empty buildings to either sell them to someone who will use it or rent it out instead of just leaving them vacant. Too often the tax code for businesses rewards leaving a building empty. This is a remedy for that.

A positive idea that will allow younger Japanese the chance to move into larger houses

proxyToday  07:10 am JST

One of the reasons that the country is littered with abandoned houses and fields is that many people are declining to inherit property because of the amount of taxes they would have to pay.

If property inheritance tax was actually reasonable the local governments would be able to gather tax revenue that way and solve the empty building problem in one go. These politicians have the brains of a rocking horse.

RodneyToday  10:37 am JST

used several times a year as a vacation home, would attract an annual tax bill of roughly 939,000 yen.

ive been looking for a second house for about a year, an empty one, free or very cheap. Hard to find. Now with tax…impossible

The full sentence was "Meanwhile, a five-year-old condominium on the top floor of a central high-rise building, 100 square meters in size and used several times a year as a vacation home, would attract an annual tax bill of roughly 939,000 yen."

You really think that's the kind of property you're going to find for free or very cheap?

"The tax on a vacant 40-year-old apartment, 60 square meters in size and struggling to be sold, would be around 24,000 yen a year."

There you go. If you're looking for a cheap or free besso, you ought to be able to swing that, eh? No need to continue identifying with an economic elite that doesn't include or care about you.

It seems the Japanese goverment is really desperate for revenue. They keep taxing and taxing. If they keep taxing like this in the future the country's economy is much worse than I thought.

Three goalsToday  01:34 pm JST

It seems the Japanese goverment is really desperate for revenue.

The tax is being applied by the Kyoto city government.

If you can afford a second home, you can afford to pay the extra tax.

Desert TortoiseToday  12:31 pm JST

The idea is to get the owners to rent their buildings or sell them so they are occupied instead of being abandoned and boarded up. Empty buildings attract vandals, squatters and become a source of problems for the police and emergency services.

Exactly. Akiya's (abandoned homes) are a major problem in the countryside. If you can't sell or rent it then you have either have to live in it or demolish it. You can try to give it away but often the terrible conditions of the house means it would cost a lot of money to make it livable. So you can't even give them away unless they're in satisfactory condition which is rare. It's often the offspring that are left to deal with it and they don't want to move back to the countryside. Maybe the best option is to sell it a very low price or give it away as soon as the house becomes abandoned. That way at least it should be in fairly okay condition...maybe.

a five-year-old condominium on the top floor of a central high-rise building, 100 square meters in size and used several times a year as a vacation home, would attract an annual tax bill of roughly 939,000 yen.

Hmmmm, and this is supposed to help solve this problem?

a supply shortage and the departure of many youths unable to secure housing amid skyrocketing prices

How does this tax on high end condos help make for more affordable housing for the youths?

While the tax is expected to generate around 950 million yen in revenue annually,

If you were the owner of a high end condo, you would either sell the property, or live there enough to avoid this tax, methinks. 1 million yen is hardly chicken feed.

Good luck with getting more tax revenues than the cost of tax revenue collection will incur.

It seems like a tiny tax that can’t help anything. I also think inheritance tax is the main problem. If you remove inheritance tax, young people can have their own houses. This tax wouldn’t be useful for anything and not worth the ink wasted to write it on documents.

Inheritance tax is indeed a blight on Japan.

The population is shrinking, yet land is getting chopped into smaller and smaller slices because people have to do so in order to deal with inheritance taxes.

shogun36Today  10:32 am JST

Kyoto to introduce Japan's 1st empty homes tax

I'm surprised that nay of the j-gov haven't begun to tax the homeless as well. Or pets or kids or insects for that matter.

Any house/property in my country whether vacant. abandoned, primary residence or secondary, occupied or unoccupied is taxed. School tax, County Tax, Town tax all adds up to figures multiple times higher than in many places in Japan.