Japan’s tax laws get in way of more women working full time

According to the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry, 56 percent of all women who worked in Japan in 2018 had nonregular jobs, meaning part-time, temp or contract work that usually lacks benefits. As things stand, women who hold part-time jobs to supplement household budgets work only up to the point where their income is less than the ceiling in order to avoid taxes and ensure their spouse gets the full deduction. In a lecture she gave in January at the Japan National Press Club, Naoko Kuga, an economist at Nippon Life Insurance Research Institute, explained that the Japanese workplace has been gradually changing to accommodate more women as regular, career-track employees, while supermarkets and convenience stores are offering a variety of side dishes for households with working parents, but the lack of corresponding changes in attitudes toward family structures prevents women from being fully fledged members of the workforce.

Source: www.japantimes.co.jp