If there are two things conservatives are unified in their hatred of, it's wealth redistribution and paying taxes.
And yet, Japan's taxation/wealth distribution scheme is so diabolically clever, taxpayers are competing with each other to pay their taxes, and I can't blame them.
Here's how it works.
Everyone has to pay taxes. There's no getting around that.
But small rural towns in Japan are hurting because they're not collecting much in terms of property tax thanks to the population bust, so the Japanese government created a system where citizens can redirect up to 20% of their "residence tax" to a rural community in exchange for gifts from that community.
The community in turn can spend 30% of that redirected tax toward purchasing gifts (which usually goes into community businesses).
Gifts include things like local fish, meat, seafood, vegetables, live koi, 96 rolls of toilet paper (that's oddly specific), hang-glider lessons, welding lessons, test driving a Porsche, even being mayor for a day.
And the taxes don't have to go to just one community, you can spread it out.
Some bloggers have claimed up to 200 gifts per year. One woman claims she furnished her entire apartment with gifts from smaller communities where she donated her residence taxes.
Yoko Koizumi, a financial planner in Yokohama, uses the program to go grocery shopping, stocking up her fridge and freezer with "gifts":
"I don't usually choose to donate to somewhere because of a connection to the place," she said. "It's more because I look at the thank-you gift and think, ‘I really want to eat this thing.'"
Not everyone is happy with the system. Some of the bigger towns and cities have seen significant losses in tax revenue. Tokyo's Setagaya ward loss $70 million in tax revenue due to the gift deductions.
"This system is a mistake," said Setagaya Mayor Nobuto Hosaka. If losses continue to grow, he said, the ward could struggle to fund day-to-day services such as road repair and garbage collection.
Roads?
This is the part where libertarians lose their stuff.
Still if the government is going to do it anyway, at least you can get something out of the deal.
For example, one town is offering locally-sourced Wagyu steaks as a gift.
I think even Ron Swanson could get behind paying taxes with a deal like that.
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