The main opposition party is doing an about-face to endorse eliminating the consumption tax on food products, compounding the internal tension already growing within the ruling parties to announce tax-cutting pledges ahead of the Upper House election.
“A lot (of Upper House lawmakers) said to make the (consumption) tax rate zero,” Masaji Matsuyama, the Liberal Democratic Party's secretary-general in the Upper House, said Thursday after meeting with his Lower House counterpart, Hiroshi Moriyama, a staunch fiscal conservative and Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s right-hand man.
Of the 90 LDP Upper House lawmakers who responded to a survey by Matsuyama on how to curb the impacts of inflation and U.S. tariffs, 80% said they favored slashing the consumption tax, Matsuyama said, while 70% wanted to cut the consumption tax for food products.
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