Yes!
New Govt Office To Advise Small Firms On Consumption Tax
January 16 (Nikkei) — The government plans to set up a new office to provide advice to small businesses that wish to transfer consumption tax increases to the prices of their products and services, prior to the introduction of the 8% tax rate in April 2014, The Nikkei has learned.
Subcontractors are becoming concerned that they may be pressured into not passing tax increases over to their product and service prices, as many of them do not have the advantage in price negotiations.
The new office will address such concerns by helping firms to avoid taking on excessive costs. It will accept inquiries and complaints from throughout Japan by telephone and e-mail.
The Japan Fair Trade Commission will work closely with relevant ministries to inspect companies that are suspected of having rejected requests for price increases from their suppliers. The government also plans to come up with new legislation to impose strict controls on such companies.
I guess they plan to inflate their way out of their economic funk.
But its a consumption tax; won’t that, on net, take money out of circulating?
@Bob Salsa, I guess they can counter the tax drain with more fiscal spending. The tax-imposed price increase start the fire and the increased fiscal spending feeds it.
I’m slow but eventually I can get it. 😉
The mainstream would call this a structural shift?
The government is making sure the ‘little guy’ isn’t going to take the brunt of a tax increase that may never happen. Nets to a shift of wealth from large to small companies lower on the food chain. It seems Japan is going beyond simple Keynesian policies and branching into micro policies that reduce inequality or at least the growth in inequality. A real world study on the ‘propensity to spend’ might even be possible.
Sorry to see you close the comments section down. But I can well understand the comments eating into other time commitments.
It’s always sad to see a school close! I hope it’s temporary.
@Nihat, A Big loss .
@Walid M,
He’s going to see a big loss in traffic too. I’m guessing over 90%.
Not sure why it’s so much work to allow comments. There’s really no need to micromanage them, as the trolling activity is extremely low here. Although perhaps that’s an observation worthy of Fox Butterfield.
@MSM,
Agreed, really don’t understand the move at all.. especially during what appears to me to be a very exciting time for MMT.
At any rate, learned a lot from the comments sections here, thanks Warren and everyone else!
@ESM M,
Not sure if he’ll lose that much traffic…i’m always interested in his thoughts with or without comments.
Disappointing news about the comments – I learned much through them over the past year though, so thank you Warren.
Is there an active
MMT forum elsewhere on the net?
@Cesar,
Cesar – try
NEP
and
Bill Mitchell’s Billy Blog
@Clonal Antibody,
Thanks, I’ll check them out.
And Mike Norman’s too. Cheers.
We gladly accept comments at Mike Norman Economics
@Mike Norman,
Thank you Mike.
@Mike Norman,
Actually I’m puzzled about the timing of Warren’s decision to discontinue with the comments section. After many years of promoting MMT concepts, his ideas finally make a breakthrough into the mainstream with the debate about the platinum coin. As PT Barnum once said, “As long as they spell the name right. Even if if Warren doesn’t have time to respond why not let other participants continue the discussion?
Cullen Roche demonstrates just how dumb he really is:
http://pragcap.com/all-your-dorks-are-belong-to-this
It would be nice to keep comments open while managing the quantity: add a login, this immediately will get you rid of drive by commenters (people hate creating accounts and logging in) which is often most of the traffic, and you only need to moderate new people for a while, not every message.
Failing that at least issue a new currency whose value comes from that it can be used to buy commenting rights. You can then manage comment quantity through simple monetary policy operations.
A MMT forum which is not someone or some group’s blog could be useful too.
Warren,
You could leave comments open so other can discuss amonst each other, and just note the caveat that you will no longer be responding to comments.
@JK,
I second that suggestion . The people posting on this site are part of the attraction .