Hiroshi SATO, The University of Tokyo, Japan
Japan is one of the most aged countries in the world. The Tokyo metropolitan area, Japan's capital, is also facing the problem of declining local tax revenues due to a declining and aging population. In the future, as the number of elderly people increases, social security costs will increase, and public services provided by basic municipalities may decline. There are concerns about the crisis of the operation of basic municipalities and urban governance.
Since there are regional differences in population decline and aging, it is effective to analyze them from the perspective of fiscal geography.
In this presentation, I examine the following questions from the perspective of fiscal geography, and present policy implications. (1) Where and by how much will local tax revenues decline? (2) What kind of policy measures are being taken? The analysis area is the basic municipalities in the Tokyo metropolitan area. The survey method is a combination of quantitative analysis (geographically weighted regression analysis, etc.) and interviews.
The main findings of this presentation are as follows. (1) In Japan, tax revenue sources have been transferred to local governments in order to promote decentralization, but in the Tokyo metropolitan area, the decrease in individual inhabitant tax is a particular problem. (2) In the case of taxation, the declining working-age population due to population decline and aging, and in the case of tax payment, socioeconomic indicators related to poverty issues and the geographical location of local governments are the determinants. (3) Basic municipalities are struggling to increase the amount of levied individual inhabitant tax and improve the collection rate.
In addition, policy implications are the sharing of tax collection across prefectures and the standardization of tax information systems to facilitate the exchange of information between neighboring municipalities.
Mots clés : public finance|local tax|urban governance|aging population| Japan
A103358HS