Like other developed countries, the population of Japan is unevenly distributed and centralizes into big cities like Tokyo and Osaka. Some people living in those cities away from their original places want to pay their tax to their hometown, so a new taxpaying system was designed. As part of the local tax, a new tax scheme had started a few years ago, in which taxpayers can choose to divert part of their residential tax to a specified local government.
Consequently, most municipalities prepared lots of kinds of gifts for their taxpayers to get more income. They return their products of about 20~30% value of received tax. That led taxpayers to pay tax to them.
Dairy farming municipalities offer their products like meat, and dairy products. Fishery ones offer seafood. Lots of cities manufacturing watches, PCs, and home electrical appliances offer their products as gifts in return. This stimulates their industries and the scramble for taxpayers is getting fierce, though it's good for taxpayers.
The following picture shows a robot cleaner Roomba, which I got for free by diverting a part of my residential tax to another city.
(Vocabulary)
scramble 《常に単数形で》 (欲しい物・必要な物などをめぐる) 奪い合い, 争奪戦 [＋scramble for]
the usual scramble for the bathroom in the morning 毎朝繰り返されるトイレの奪い合い
That's a good idea to be able to divert part of your tax.
Posted by: Peter | Jun 30, 2017 at 03:17 PM