In his first appearance for questions in the Upper House on Tuesday, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida defended his recent decision to backtrack on an earlier pledge to seek a change to the capital gains tax and offered little in the way of details on new policy measures, despite the looming Oct. 31 general election.
During last month¡¯s Liberal Democratic Party presidential campaign, Kishida¡¯s platform included an economic policy aimed at growth and redistribution as part of a larger plan to raise incomes by 2030. Seeking a capital gains tax, he said, would aid in distributing the benefits of economic growth. But in a policy speech Friday, Kishida omitted the idea and the plan itself, inviting criticism from the opposition.
¡°Where was the mention of the 2030 income doubling plan that you strongly advocated during the election for LDP president?¡± asked Tetsuro Fukuyama, secretary-general of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, during the session. ¡°You also dropped the idea for a stronger capital gains tax. Was that idea withdrawn due to pressure from within the LDP or the bureaucracy?¡±
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