Circumstances leading to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's dissolution of the Lower House and call for a general election in December clearly indicate he became allergic to the way the Finance Ministry works with great power and influence, said a leading figure of the governing Liberal Democratic Party the morning after the voting in the election.
Under the Abe administration, he said, the ministry has begun to lose some of its previously unchallenged power within the government bureaucracy. According to a staff member of the LDP well versed in the party's fiscal policies, those close to Abe started talking about creating what they call an "internal revenue agency" (IRA) around the time of the general election.
In the 2000s, there were two occasions in which there emerged a mounting momentum to create such an agency, into which all the power of collecting revenues, like taxes and social insurance premiums, would be concentrated.