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Staff of Reuters 2 minutes Pedestrians make their way through a business district in Tokyo, Japan, on December 7, 2020. Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) – The finance ministry announced on Monday that Japan had a record amount of money left over from the previous year’s budget because to higher-than-expected tax receipts, a windfall that is likely to feed legislators’ calls for more coronavirus stimulus spending. The fiscal legislation says that half of the remaining 4.5 trillion yen ($40 billion) must be used to service debt, while the balance can be used for other purposes, such as a supplementary budget for the current fiscal year. The amount of money left over from the previous fiscal year surpassed the previous high of 2 trillion yen set in fiscal 2011. The money will be used to create an additional budget, with Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s cabinet under pressure from MPs to promise voters increased expenditure in the run-up to a general election in the autumn. Overall tax collection in the previous fiscal year reached an all-time high of 60.8 trillion yen, exceeding estimates by 5.7 trillion yen and allowing the government to reduce bond issuance by 4 trillion yen, according to ministry officials. According to the ministry, sales tax raised a record 21 trillion yen in the fiscal year that ended in March, while income and corporation taxes raised 19.2 trillion yen and 11.2 trillion yen, respectively. Despite the fact that a total of $3 trillion in COVID-19 fiscal packages have already added to the industrial world’s largest debt load, rising tax revenue could drive lawmakers to seek even more stimulus expenditure to tackle the coronavirus. ($1 = 110.8300 JPY) Tetsushi Kajimoto contributed reporting, and Robert Birsel edited the piece./nRead More

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