Nipponica

The internal affairs ministry plans to survey municipalities about uncollected resident tax from foreigners who leave Japan without paying, in order to consider countermeasures, a government source said Friday.

Workers living in Japan as of Jan. 1 are subject to resident tax for that year. However, it is typically paid in monthly installments from June of the following year and the time lag contributes to the problem, as some foreign workers leave Japan before their payments begin.

The core of the problem here is that municipalities are taxing people on a year delay, not people not paying. It is the first thing in the populist playbook to claim the immigrants aren't paying their fair share, but the answer to this problem is not to punish people when the system itself should be the object of reform. Adopting an immediate resident tax would simplify everything.

It is said that home is the place you long for when you are lost in the world. The place where you can be the person you are rather than the person you have to be.

For your narrator, this place is the land that lies beyond the sliding doors that separate the void from the Arrivals Floor in Haneda Airport in Tokyo Bay. Past the immigration sentries, the luggage daycare, and the passage of non-declaration, those doors are a portal to the country that took me in when I was lost in the world many years ago.