Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii and four other top Democratic Party of Japan lawmakers at the ministry decided Monday to launch a new government panel in early October to discuss tax reform, ministry officials said.
The panel, to be headed by Fujii, will serve as the sole decision-making body for tax reform, abolishing the two-tier system of the government and the Liberal Democratic Party.
A meeting with senior ministry officials, mainly from the Tax Bureau, will be held Thursday to decide the panel's organizational structure, the officials said.
Members of the new panel are expected to include one parliamentary secretary from each ministry as well as senior bureaucrats from the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry for coordination on local taxation system, they said.
Senior Vice Finance Minister Naoki Minezaki will serve as deputy chief of the panel, and a subcommittee of financial experts may be established to give advice from the medium and long-term point of view.
The decision to launch the panel was reached at a meeting of the Finance Ministry's five top-ranking parliamentarians. Finance Ministry bureaucrats were not allowed to attend the meeting, to demonstrate the DPJ's aim of implementing policies led by lawmakers.