It’s back to the tax treadmill again.
June 30th marked the requirement date for the first instalment of this financial year’s local municipal tax (juuminzei). This is only paid manually by self employed people etc., or people like me who get paid in bizarre ways off-shore, as everyone else gets theirs taken out of salary. So I went down to the post office to hand over my cash.
Next month is the first pre-payment for my 2005 income tax and then in August it’s my next juuminzei payment. Ho hum. Still, taxes here are less than in many other countries, so I can’t grumble; I suppose if I paid directly every month like I did in the UK, it’s less surprising that having to pay a lot more every quarter (though the juuminzei is actually set every June, August, November and January for a given tax year).
The amount you pay is apparently a cross of where you live (which ward of Tokyo (ku)), and how much income tax you paid. You also pay for a year where you lived on January 1st of that year. Just thought I’d pass that on, in case there are some tax fetishists out there.