Nagoya mayor again shelves pledge to double resident tax cut, citing 44.5 billion yen shortfall

Ichiro Hirosawa told a city assembly committee he would not raise the 5 percent resident tax reduction to 10 percent in fiscal 2027 either, the second year he has put the pledge off.

By Newsroom6 November 2026, 13:15 JST1 min read

Nagoya mayor again shelves pledge to double resident tax cut, citing 44.5 billion yen shortfall — Nagoya Mayor Ichiro Hirosawa at a Nagoya city assembly committee meeting on the morning of the 5th, where he announced that the expansion of the citizen tax reduction rate would not be pursued. (x)

Nagoya Mayor Ichiro Hirosawa said on Thursday that he will again postpone raising the city's resident tax reduction from 5 percent to 10 percent, putting off the pledge for fiscal 2027 as well. He told a city assembly committee he wanted to apologize plainly to residents and that the city's finances remain severe.

The city has applied the 5 percent resident tax cut since fiscal 2012, when former mayor Takashi Kawamura was in office. Hirosawa ran in the 2024 mayoral election promising to continue that policy and expand the reduction to 10 percent.

He had already shelved the increase for fiscal 2026, partly to cover costs for the Asian and Asian Para Games. The city published a fiscal outlook on Thursday projecting 1.6026 trillion yen in revenue for fiscal 2027 against 1.6471 trillion yen in spending, a shortfall of 44.5 billion yen.

The gap leaves the mayor's flagship tax pledge competing with the cost of hosting the games and the city's wider budget, and it is the second consecutive year the 10 percent target has gone unmet.