“Japan’s parliament passed a landmark tax bill Friday, finalizing the legal framework to double the nation’s sales tax by 2015 as a step toward fiscal reconstruction. The upper house enactment of the contentious bill marks the end of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s tortuous 12-month road to raise the tax to 8% in April 2014 and 10% in October 2015. …The sales tax hike will be the first since 1997, when the rate was raised to the current 5% from 3%. Wow, more than tripling the tax between 1997 and 2015. I wonder how long it will take Japan’s political class to boost the rate to 20 percent?”
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