Public finance is sometimes synonymous with government finance. It deals with budgeting the revenues and expenditures of a public sector entity, usually government. Public finance also can be defined as the raising of money by governments through taxes or borrowing and the spending of it.

In Japan, the national budget and other basic matters on public finance are governed by the Public Finance Law, 1947 (Law No. 34, Apr. 31, 1947), which has been amended time to time. This report gives an insights of the Japan’s public finance in general begins with a historic overview. A special emphasis is given to the tax system in Japan for financing the public expenditures. Finally, this report makes a comparative analysis of Japan’s public finance with that of Bangladesh.

A. Historical Overview of Japan’s Public Finance

Until the mid of 1960s, Japanese Government followed a balanced budget policy. Because of revenue shortfall, in 1965 the government started to issue bonds (mainly construction bonds) to finance the gap. The oil crisis in 1973 stagnated the tax revenue and pushed the government to amend the Public Finance Law to permit the issuance of special deficit-financing bonds in FY 1975. The government had to pass this special law for each year for deficit financing until FY 1989. During the 1970s, almost one-third of total expenditure was financed by issuing of public bonds. However, this ratio has been declined to 9.5% due fiscal consolidation and economic bubble in 1980s.

Alongwith the collapse of bubble economy in 1990s, the great Hanshin - Awaji Earthquake in 1994 pushed back the government to have stimulus packages by tax cut and issuing special deficit financing bonds again. In 1997, the Japanese economy experienced unanticipated adversities from both domestic sides (bankruptcy of some financial institutions) and international sides (Asian