Japan's Lower House Passes Food Tax Cut Bill: Rate to Fall From 8% to 1% for Two Years, as Ishiba and Three Other LDP Lawmakers Walk Out Before the Vote
Tokyo — Japan's House of Representatives passed the Takaichi government's food consumption tax cut bill in a plenary session on November 6, with the ruling coalition voting in favour and every opposition party against. The bill cuts the consumption tax rate on food and beverages from the current 8 percent to 1 percent for two years starting in fiscal 2027. It now goes to the House of Councillors, where the ruling coalition lacks a majority; a special committee of 40 members (19 from the ruling camp and 20 from the opposition, excluding the chair) has been set up to deliberate, leaving the bill's fate uncertain. The government aims for enactment by the end of the Diet session on December 12.
The opposition objected mainly on funding: the bill pledges not to rely on deficit-covering bonds, yet the specifics of its funding and of the benefit scheme for low- and middle-income households to be introduced alongside the cut were largely deferred. There was dissent inside the ruling party as well: before the vote, four Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers — former Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, former economy minister Yuko Obuchi, former justice minister Yoshihisa Furukawa and lawmaker Hajime Funada — left the chamber and abstained. Ishiba told people close to him he 'could not support that kind of thing.' Obuchi said afterwards she had agonised over it until the very last moment but that abiding by the party's decision was only natural, so she abstained rather than voting against; Funada demanded concrete figures on who the new benefits would cover and at what scale.
Cutting the food consumption tax is a centrepiece pledge of the Takaichi cabinet against the rising cost of living and a key item in the LDP's coalition agreement with the Japan Innovation Party. What happens after the two years — whether the rate returns to 8 percent — is already a focus of debate; Funada noted in abstaining that an argument over raising the tax again in two years would be hard to avoid.
(Source: Nikkei)
Source: Nikkei
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：日本首相高市早苗（组阁当日资料图）。日本内阁官房，CC BY 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on the day her cabinet was formed (file photo). Cabinet Secretariat of Japan, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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