TOKYO: Gold smuggling into Japan has jumped again according to local media, with the notorious yakuza crime syndicates now joined by ‘amateurs’ exploiting the profit margin offered to illegal supplies by the country’s tax system.
Japan raised its ‘consumption tax’ on goods and services for the first time in 17 years in April 2014, taking the levy from 5% to 8%. Uniquely amongst sales-tax rules worldwide, gold owners can earn back that cost when they sell, paid and then reclaimed from the government by the cash-for-gold shop or bullion dealer involved.
In the year ending June 2014, Japanese authorities made only 8 seizures of smuggled gold, but the number jumped to 177 in the 12 months to 2015 and then 294 in the year to June 2016, with a possible loss in tax revenue of ¥610 million ($5.5m) according to the Finance Ministry’s Customs and Tariff Bureau.
A further hike in consumption tax to 10% planned for this year has been delayed to April 2019.
June 2017 saw the Japanese customs authorities’ largest gold seizure to date, with the discovery of 206 kilograms of smuggled gold, worth around ¥930 million ($8.4m), at a fishing port on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu.
Close by plane or boat to South Korea, Kyushu’s largest city, Fukuoka, is a center for yakuza activity and has become Japan’s new “capital” of gold smuggling.
