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Billions Of Yen Hidden In Cardboard Boxes

Their scheme worked for a few years, but it was eventually discovered:

Two Japanese sisters have been arrested for allegedly trying to evade paying a fortune in inheritance tax.

Tax officials say the sisters hid almost 6bn yen ($58m) in cardboard boxes and paper bags at their home in the city of Osaka.

They are accused of failing to declare most of the money they inherited from their wealthy father, who died almost four years ago.

The National Tax Agency say it is the biggest ever case of its kind in Japan.

Prosecutors say Hatsue Shimizu and Yoshiko Ishii inherited about 7.5bn yen ($73m) when their father, who owned a property and finance company, died in 2004.

{democracy:162}

[hat tip to John K]

24 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - March 12, 2008 at 2:05 pm

Categories: Odd / Strange Tags: japan, news, taxes

http://www.neilduckett.com Neil Duckett

Inheritance tax sucks, it’s a ridiculous tax.
mg2003

How can anybody say that inheritance tax is fair? Please explain.

The income of the father, in this case, was already taxed when he earned it. When he dies the government double dips. I can’t understand how that is fair.
sod

your taxed all your life then when you die all your money is taxed agian. any home you may inherit youll have to sell just to pay the goverment.i can’t see where there is a logic in it apart from getting more money out of people.
http://durf.org/ Durf

If pops was smart enough to amass a fortune of that size you’d think he’d also be smart enough to squirrel it away in some little European country with no international reporting regulations.

hoihoi

the Japanese motto is …Do not leave the child the beautiful rice field.

stereo

What is unfair is not inheritance tax but inheriting huge amount of money just because a person is born in a rich family. Inheriting money more than he can handle will corrupt the person. He is likely to spend the money foolishly. Money is better spent by the people who are clever enough to earn that amount by themselves. Inheritance tax is needed to prevent the formation of social class based on nepotism that will eventually destroy democracy.

Linknoir

@ stereo

I would love to hear you say that if you were the inheriting the money.
The Overthinker

Nothing like people telling other people how to spend their own money.

As for democracy being destroyed by rich families, who do you think is in the White House now? Some poor son of an immigrant? Ask JFK about it too. Or we could go back and see how democratic the US was during the Gilded Age when the Rockefellers and other massively wealthy families were at their peak.
Jenn

Sounds like socialism.

David

Inheritance tax is the fairest tax!

Money you earn for yourself during your life time you probably deserve. If you work hard you get a lot of it. It makes sense to tax work as little as possible to encourage people to work hard. Inheritance on the other hand is a lottery – you might not contribute ANYTHING to society but still end up rich if you inherit money.
Brian

Why do your kids deserve the money you earned more than the society you made it off of? It’s not as if they’re getting nothing if the state takes a piece of it, as well. Also, while I’m not sure what the law is in Japan, only the estates of the extremely wealthy are taxed in the US. It’s not like you or your offspring are ever going to have to worry about the state taking from your inheritance.

The Overthinker

“the society you made it off of?”

What do you mean? Society got its reward when it decided that it valued the property (in this case) on offer more than the XXX million it was being sold at. Both sides profited. If I didn’t think that the meal I just ate was worth the money it cost, I would not have bought it. That is why I do not go to McDonalds, for example. Or why I do not drive a new Mercedes Benz.

I believe that the inheritance tax level is basically 60,000,000 inherited times the number of children – so if you have two children inheriting your goods, you can leave them 120,000,000 before they have to start coughing up.

And surely the person who owns the money has the right to determine who gets it.
http://www.psychobunnystudios.com ty_ping

I kind of agree here, If the parents really wanted those kids to get the money, they would have either set up bank accounts in the kids names and placed the money there as gifts or loans so that the inheritance tax wouldn’t have to be paid, or given them the house before dying. It’s not like Japanese people are unaware of this tax. So there are things that can be done to get around it before you are gone.

Hell that’s what my grandpa did, set up a special account for my cousins and his children and my family and every year just put money in each of them so when he died, most of that money was untaxed. (Except in the case of my younger cousins, their money was in a college bond, so they can’t get it unless they enter a university, or until they turn 30.)

stereo

In that case, you have to worry about the gift tax. Unlike US, in Japan, the receiver of gifts must pay the tax, if the total value of the gifts received in a year is more than 1,100,000 yen. The tax rate is 50%(!), if the value of the gifts exceeds 11,500,000 yen.

OsakaGuy

Inheritance taxes aren’t as unfair as property taxes. You don’t really own your land since you have to pay the government “rent” on it.
Blue

They are not Japanese. They are Korean sisters.

http://aki-akiaki.blogspot.com Aki

True. Sankei reported the nationality as South Korea. Although BBC reported their names by their Japanese pseudonyms (Shimizu and Ishii), their true name is Lee, according to Sankei, Nikkei and Mainichi.

U Far Tid

We’re Japanese living in the US, on green cards. My father worked a small company with about 3 employees, his own little thing. My mother is a typical Japanese housewife, has not worked a day since she was in college, probably 40 years ago.
He dies a couple of years ago. The US government took 60% of everything he had, all his company assets, properties and money because he was not a Yank. Left my mother with nothing. After all those years of employing Americans here in his company, paying taxes for about 2 decades, running a good, honest business, they stripped everything from her.

There is no thanks from this bastard, hypocritical, slave-driving State.

The Overthinker

It’s an improvement from how they used to treat Japanese immigrants, at least….

http://randomurl.com LondonGaijin

I would have liked to know how much would have been taken in tax…
morningstar

THE TWO SISTERS MADE THE MISTAKE IN NOT SPENDING THE INHERITANCE.
Troy

Inheritance taxes are like all other taxes. They are needed to feed the parasites of our societies regardless of the country. You can word taxation differently to sweeten it so the masses will swallow it.
stereo

It seems you are kind of people who cannot care less about the privacy. They are watching as you use cards.
otsuka

God forbid the gov’t finds out I’m buying tea and cigs from conbinis twice a week.

Billions Of Yen Hidden In Cardboard Boxes

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