"One step forward, two steps back". We face such a situation from time to time. Tax support to specified nonprofit corporations announced by the Commissioner of the National Tax Administration last December is a good example.
"Preferential tax treatment, which has been earnest and long standing wish for those who are involved in nonprofit activities, has finally been achieved. Since it adopts objective entitlement criteria unlike the current opaque system where evaluation much depends on administrative persons in charge, it seems to be very transparent" some people understood so, and were pleased that some progress had been made.

The new special tax treatment will come into effect from October 2001; if individuals and corporations donate money to nonprofit organizations that have satisfied certain requirements, their income tax will be deducted in proportion to the amounts. You will, however, find this document absurd when you carefully examine the requirements to be certified as entitled incorporated NPOs. The following NPOs shall not be subject to it if:
- they receive large sums of private grants.
- they receive donations under 3,000 yen from many people.
- they receive a number of member's fees and donations from regular members.
- they make efforts to secure profits out of non-primary works so as to be financially independent.
- their activities are limited in one city, town or village.
- While the following NPOs can be easily entitled to preferential tax treatment as far as:
- they much rely on heavily grants from the government and local governments
- they are mostly organized with supporting members who do not have the right to vote and do not manage their organization democratically.

Moreover the certified organizations are obliged every year to prepare documents requiring an enormous volume of clerical work such as all donors' address/name/donation amount, salaries for all executive staff members, members' lists based on cities, and etc. Under the fore-mentioned circumstances, I must claim that the new tax support obviously excludes most nonprofit organizations. On top of that, it will surely be a step back if the very tax reform to nonprofit organizations should be considered to be at an end.

How, then should we cope with this situation? I think we have two ways. One is to deny it completely and to seek radical changes. The other is to accept this tax reform but to adapt ourselves to "step-wise refinement" so as to improve it by showing counterproposals. When the NPO/NGO Tax System Reform Conference wrapped up various proposals against the government-party's support tax proposal, so that as many nonprofit organizations as possible could be certified and be entitled to preferential tax treatment, some people claimed that would result in backing of the evasive government-party's proposal in both vision and philosophy

As shown above there are various objectives in view and developments, and the decision about what way should be selected will all depend on the situation. So we cannot say with certainty which is the best way. The decisions in each situation are affected by various factors such as the contents of a proposal, feasibility, and room for modification.

What is essential is the ability to criticize a proposal. In other words; if we submit a counterproposal, the ability to design the details of the counterproposal precisely and to account logically for its realization and effectiveness are required. If we do not have such an abilityÅAwe have no other alternative but to completely deny or boycott the system in order to demonstrate our alarm.

The NPO/NGO Tax System Reform Conference decide to gather our modified proposals into one document and submit it to all the parties. It is not quite sure whether NPOs and NGOs have the abilities mentioned above, but we judged that the current tax system would go ahead for the time being unless any concrete modified proposal is submitted. Under the present circumstances we cannot only criticize, but we must take action to develop the counterproposals.