Re: [tlug] Japan to Tax E-Content

[David Smith-Uchida <dave@example.com>]

Well, if you read the article you'll see that some Japanese retailers are using a foreign presence as a loophole to get around collecting and paying consumption tax on Japanese language e-books.

I doubt that there will be any "great firewall" or deep content inspection to enforce the tax.  It's better and worse than that - you'll be responsible for keeping track of any tax you should have paid and including it with you income tax.  California has had a similar system for a long time.  Average people ignore it for the most part but it's something the authorities can use to bludgeon you with.  And they do look for people who try to bypass it in a big way, like buying cars out-of-state (that's California - good luck with that in Japan!).

As far as software goes, this won't be much of an impact on the consumer market since most consumers want to buy Japanese language software and most of that goes through Japanese distributors (or something like the Apple App Store which already charges consumption tax).  However, there may be an impact on enterprise software since most of that does come from overseas and is sold direct and saving 5 or 8% on a million-dollar contract is worth messing about with purchasing via the overseas office.

On Jan 15, 2014, at 12:19 PM, CL <az.4tlug@example.com> wrote:

Another reason to hate Abe and the LDP.  By 2015, you'll have to pay shouhizei on the content you download from overseas, a move to "protect" domestic book retailers. Yeah, sure, I believe that.  There are so many English-language e-book sales outlets in our local shotengai ... and I walk right by all of them to go to Amazon ...

"Japan to tax sales of content downloaded from abroad"

http://www.itworld.com/it-management/399937/japan-tax-sales-content-downloaded-abroad?goback=.gde_73211_member_5828825356945080322#!

or:

http://tinyurl.com/k6bp2cw

--
CL

--
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
please see the instructions at http://lists.tlug.jp/list.html

The TLUG mailing list is hosted by ASAHI Net, provider of mobile and
fixed broadband Internet services to individuals and corporations.
Visit ASAHI Net's English-language Web page: http://asahi-net.jp/en/

Attachment: smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature