Special tax measures may be temporarily applied for the planned breakup of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. but they will not be applied to consolidated earnings, a top Finance Ministry official said Feb. 20.
Vice Finance Minister Tadashi Ogawa told a news conference that the issue of taxing consolidated earnings must be handled with caution. However, he said, special tax measures may need to be taken for a certain period of time for the split of the giant telecommunications company. "This is a policy issue, but these special tax measures for NTT would be a different story from the general idea of taxing consolidated earnings," he said.
A bill revising the NTT Law to allow its split into three companies under one holding company is planned for consideration by the current Diet session. The law would break up the firm into one long-distance and three regional carriers by 1999 and eventually allow the long-distance firm to enter the global market.