That's not just true of Japan it's true of pretty much any income tax system: Say you have a two person household consisting of person A and person B.

First configuration: Person A engages in wealth creation by running the household, raising the children, etc. etc. That wealth-creation is tax-free since it's never paid for in monetary terms. Whatever time is left over can be spent doing jobs that don't demand fulltime status. Those jobs don't pay as much on an hourly basis, but that income will be very tax efficient as the total sum of money will be lower and therefore a larger proportion of it will end up in the lower income-tax bands. This frees up person B to do a fulltime job, maximizing income (albeit earned in a less tax-efficient way).

Second configuration: Both person A and person B do a fulltime job, maximizing income. Now they both pay a lot of taxes, since the both earn a lot of money. They use some of the money left over after taxes to pay for a nanny, housekeeper, etc.

In order for first and second configuration to "break even" the hourly rate for person A under the second configuration would have to be A LOT more than under the first configuration to make up for the added inefficiency in tax.

My contention would be: It's pretty rare for both person A and person B to be able to earn so much under the second configuration so as to break even with the first configuration (as measured by hosehold disposable income, i.e. after taxes and everything).

I can't help but feel like this is a strong misinterpretation of the circumstances.

The author tries really hard to make this a woman's issue, but as far as I know the law doesn't lay out different rules for women specifically, just the less-earning spouses that take care of the children, so the same problems exist for husbands that stay at home. However, women universally tend to not marry "down" when it comes to finances, education, etc., while men do. They also tend to find men without a career to be unambitious, which is generally considered to be an unattractive trait in men for romantic purposes. This is true for poor countries rife with sexism, as well as for rich countries that treat women and men equally. (All of this has been covered by extensive sutdies) In Japan in particular young women tend to have high expectations of men, because their parents and grandparents had no financial issues during the economic bubble and their mothers and grandmothers did not have to work at all or much. Many Japanese women can't wait to marry in order to start a family and stop working; it's their life goal and they only consider their career to be temporary from the start. This even true for most women who graduate from elite universities in Japan (I saw a study about Tokyo university graduates mentioning this). So that's why in practice we're talking about mostly women here and I wouldn't blame men for that.

The argument about the time spent on housework also sounds rather weird and insignificant to me, because it mentions a significant gap between men and women, but also mentions that Japanese spend less time on housework in general. 263mins = 4h23m a week is a number that I pull off without trouble as a single man working full-time without the least bit of help from a spouse. The article also doesn't mention whether this number is limited to families with children or the whole population.

The part about bento boxes is just a meme. Women are not considered to be bad mothers if they don't create bento boxes that look like Pikachu and friends.

There are legitimate issues for women working in Japan, some of which we have in other countries, some we don't, but I don't see any of them in this article. All I see is "less-earning spouses (usually women) get too many benefits, that's why the alternative of working isn't attractive enough". And instead of complaining about beautiful bento boxes, the author should draw attention to serious issues like the incredible lack of kindergarden spots and the like.

Just for people who are new to the Japan Times, I should point out that this article is somehow in the "News" section, not the "Opinion" sections. How they can get away with saying, "If the government really wants to encourage women to work more, it should revoke the tax deduction framework." in a "news" piece without it being a quote, I have no idea, but this is absolutely typical of the Japan Times.

I should also point out that the piece is full of misleading information used to bolster their argument. For example:

"Prior to 2018, a person who made no more than ¥1.03 million a year in income did not have to pay income tax and could be claimed as a dependent on their spouse’s tax return, meaning a deduction of ¥380,000."

This is completely dependent upon the spouse's salary. ¥1.03 million is about $10K, just in case you aren't familiar with the currency. A deduction of ¥380,000 is 38% -- which implies that the marginal tax rate of the spouse is %38 percent. This would be a huge salary for the spouse in Japanese terms.

It's important to understand that personal income tax in Japan is very low. However, you have to pay a fixed 7% for pension and health coverage and another 5-10% for city and prefectural tax (depending on where you live). There are no deductions on pension, city and prefectural tax. Typically if you are paying an overall 30-35% tax rate, your personal income tax rate is only somewhere around 15-20%.

Have a look here and scroll down to the personal tax rates: https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2206.html A 40% marginal tax rate starts at 18 million yen, or $180K. Yes, not so high in SV, but I don't know anyone where I live that makes this much as a salary.

A more typical marginal tax rate is 15 or 20%.

Like I said, this is typical for Japan Times "news" stories unfortunately. I feel odd saying this because while the piece is terrible, I actually agree with the idea of reducing dependent deductions and the need for more Japanese women to get positions in permanent positions in Japan.

This article reads like a cruel joke. In a country with some of the longest working hours in the world, where people working themselves to death is a serious issue, where the birth rate is crashing, it's calling for even more work? A horrible perversion of feminism, that makes as much sense as calling for more women to be made homeless to bring them to parity with men.

Anything is justified to "stimulate the economy" I guess.

why is the goal for women to work full time as if that in itself is some societal good? i want to live in a society where people don’t have to work full time

None of this has anything to do with helping people. Instead it is about big soul less companies looking for more ways to get cheap labor. Things like family etc. are a distraction from that goal.

I would like to know when, if ever, we will be able to have a conversation on HN about whether women working (i.e. working outside rather than raising a family) is an absolute unquestionable good thing. Surely we can't complain about falling birth rates at the same time that we complain about we don't have enough women working? Japan particularly wants to avoid the elephant in the room.