As stated earlier, it is believed that there will be an increasing trend toward groups forming into businesses in the future, and thus this will certainly not be very effective. Currently tax reduction for local taxes involving donations is only applied to community chest associations and the Japan Red Cross. However, in the light of the fact that the majority of NPO corporations carry out most of their activities within their respective local areas it would be advisable to look into this problem.
The items mentioned up to this point are the main topics regarding the taxation system and we are not prepared at this time to point out all of the areas that need to be revised. However, it would be beneficial to explore the topic noted in number 5 a bit which is perhaps the most serious problem, namely, how to set-up a donation deduction system of a framework that differs from the current specific public welfare advancement corporation system.
Making NPO corporations also into the subject of the current specific public welfare advancement corporation system is, from the point of view of system revision, actually the easiest to understand and its procedures would also be quite simple. On the other hand, it may be felt that this is not enough to solve all problems. However, as was stated previously, with approval being limited to only a very few corporations the system works basically in form only and has almost no effect in actual operations. For this reason a donation deduction system that differs completely in structure from the specific public welfare advancement system must be established.
In order to solve this problem it would be advisable to establish a philosophy of "Civilian interest" that differs in its nature from "Specific interest" which is determined by the competent authorities and the Ministry of Finance and set-up a "Civilian public welfare advancement corporation" system. Although the conception of this system has not yet been made in concrete terms, it would be necessary to create a framework in which it would be possible to make judgements concerning public welfare properties with the support of a large number of civilians. Preferential tax measures serve in the role of substituting for tax payment. At present there is a demand by the taxpayers for system that they can accept and that would work in harmony with the existing one. Based on the premise that "Specific interests" will continue to exist, it will be important to advance the concept of "Civilian interests" which differ in its very nature with this. Along with establishing a "civilian" philosophy that can withstand the legal system using the wording of "Civilian interests" it will be important to secure a "Public interest" philosophy that will substitute the traditional government-based image of interest with one that is more socially oriented.
It is hoped that these drastic revisions of the civil law to be implemented in the future will bring about a unification of the traditional specific public welfare advancement corporations and these civilian public welfare advancement corporations. We are not too sure how appropriate it is to unify the two, then label it a "public welfare advancement corporation" system. The current specific public welfare advancement system is extremely limited and is quite transparent with the authorities possessing a great deal of power. However, unifying this with the newly established civilian public interest advancement system will have to make it more transparent and more applicable over a wider range of issues. This civilian public interest advancement system takes on the significance of being a model experiment in order to achieve this. The question is just how well this experiment will be understood and evaluated by the taxpayers.
