The Abe administration plans to expand the hometown donation system in which taxpayers contribute money to local governments of their choice in return for tax reductions in the places where they currently live. It hopes the reform to be introduced in fiscal 2015 will contribute to revitalization of rural areas — one of its key policy agendas.

In doing so, it will be important for the administration to remind taxpayers that the system was originally meant to financially help one's native place in the countryside that is suffering from depopulation and other woes, thereby rectifying the excessive concentration of financial resources in large metropolitan areas.

These days, however, many people apparently use the system in order to get rewards — mostly gifts of local specialities — from local governments to which they make the donations.