Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may put off a sales tax rise and call a snap Lower House election next summer, in tandem with a poll for the upper chamber, imitating a winning strategy he used a year ago, some advisers and political sources say.
Such a move would upset fiscal conservatives in his Liberal Democratic Party and Finance Ministry officials worried about the huge public debt and social security costs in the world's third-biggest economy.
But that might cut little ice with Abe and his aides who, political insiders say, are now formulating policy based on political, not economic, calculations.