＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:https://skawa68.com/
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
The “Furusato (hometown) tax payment” system was established in 2008 as a way for people working in cities such as Tokyo and Osaka to make a small contribution to the prefecture or municipality where they are from. The reason is that while urban municipalities receive a lot of tax revenue, the municipalities where they were born and raised do not receive much tax revenue.
However, the fact that this “hometown tax payment” system allowed people to choose the municipality of their choice, even if it was not the municipality of their birthplace, may have been the cause of the problems that arose.
1. what is “hometown tax payment”?
Here is a brief explanation of the “hometown tax payment” system.
(1) Furusato tax payment is a “donation” to a prefecture or municipality. (In principle, the full amount of the donation, excluding the ¥2,000 copayment, is deductible as a tax-deductible donation.
(2) You can pay Furusato tax to any municipality, not only to your hometown. (Some municipalities allow the taxpayer to choose how the donation will be used.
(3) The administrative flow is as follows: “select a municipality” → “pay hometown tax” → “file a tax return” → “receive a deduction from income tax” → “receive a deduction from the following year’s inhabitant tax”.
2. “Problems” with the hometown tax system
However, “luxurious return gifts” became a hot topic on the Internet, and “hometown tax payments” to municipalities with high “return ratio” for “high return gifts,” even if they are not from one’s home municipality, surged and became a problem.
Some of the municipalities were offering 70% to 80% of the tax returns. According to a 2015 survey by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), the average cost of purchasing and sending back tax returns from hometowns amounted to 40% of the amount received. 2017, the MIC issued a notice stating that “the return ratio should be 30% or less” in order to curb the returns that deviate from the purpose of the “hometown tax payment” system.
Many people have heard of this “Furusato Tax Payment” but have never actually done it. However, recently, commercials of “Furusato Tax Payment” have been aired frequently on TV, and we often see advertisements of “Furusato Tax Payment sites” such as “You can pay Furusato Tax Payment with Rakuten” on the Internet.
3. Rampant growth of “fake websites” for hometown tax payments
Fake websites for “hometown tax payments” have been mushrooming recently, with fraud groups aiming to defraud people of their donations.
On December 4, Koga City, Fukuoka Prefecture, announced the discovery of a fake website for hometown tax payment. The site was displayed as if the tax returns were 35% off the application (payment) amount by illegally copying the “Rakuten Furusato Tax Payment” image. Fukuoka Prefecture has confirmed 12 fake websites in 12 municipalities.
A fake hometown tax payment site claiming to be Mikasa City, Hokkaido, Japan, offered a special price for a black-skinned watermelon as a return gift, while a fake site copying an image from the official site of Iwata City, Shizuoka, Japan, said that a 440,000 yen item was discounted to 338,000 yen.
Sakata City in Yamagata Prefecture has also issued a “Furusato Tax Payment Fake Site” alert.
Furusato tax sites such as “Satofuru” and “Furusato Choice” have also issued a “Fake Site Alert”. These sites are calling for confirmation with the local government before making a donation from such sites.
Please note that the account to which the money is to be transferred may be a personal name, or there may be “garbled characters” or “unnatural Japanese.
The “fake sites” are full of bad news: “You won’t receive your gift. You won’t get a tax deduction. Your personal information, including your credit card information, may be stolen.” It seems that the “fake sites” may be the site of crimes perpetrated by “foreign fraud groups.”
The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has also issued a warning about “fake websites” for “hometown tax payments. Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga commented on the scam, “It is very regrettable. The police will take action to control the scam. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications will also alert the local governments and ask them to take action.
If any of you are thinking of making a “hometown tax payment”, please be very careful and take appropriate measures such as entering from the “official homepage” of the local government.