In his first appearance for questions in the Upper House on Tuesday, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida defended his recent decision to backtrack on an earlier pledge to seek a change to the capital gains tax and offered little in the way of details on new policy measures, despite the looming Oct. 31 general election.
During last month’s Liberal Democratic Party presidential campaign, Kishida’s platform included an economic policy aimed at growth and redistribution as part of a larger plan to raise incomes by 2030. Seeking a capital gains tax, he said, would aid in distributing the benefits of economic growth. But in a policy speech Friday, Kishida omitted the idea and the plan itself, inviting criticism from the opposition.
“Where was the mention of the 2030 income doubling plan that you strongly advocated during the election for LDP president?” asked Tetsuro Fukuyama, secretary-general of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, during the session. "You also dropped the idea for a stronger capital gains tax. Was that idea withdrawn due to pressure from within the LDP or the bureaucracy?"