Forest Environment Transfer Tax, Prefectural Forest Policy, and Support for Municipalities

Abstract

Forest environment transfer tax at the national level and the accompanying implementations of forest management schemes were introduced in Japan in 2019. Local governments of both prefectures and municipalities receive the tax revenue and need to disclose how the revenue was used annually. There are existing forest tax schemes in 37 prefectures, and prefectural governments are in need to demarcate and elucidate the uses of their prefectural taxes and the national-level tax. In this study, surveys were conducted to detect (1) demarcation of uses of the prefectural taxes and national-level tax in individual prefectures, (2) information exchange meetings of municipalities in individual prefectures and supporting bodies, (3) exchange of staff members and (4) guidelines for new management systems. Although there is a general limitation of comparing prefectures with different contexts and prefectural tax schemes, it was identified for (1), demarcation methods of uses of the prefectural taxes and national-level tax in forest management such as thinning differ among prefectures. There was diversity in patterns for (2) and six prefectures established new permanent bodies for supporting municipalities. For (4), exchanges of staff members between prefectural and municipalities were identified. In Ehime Prefecture, prefectural staff were serving as extension workers of both prefectures and municipalities simultaneously, as a newly introduced system in the prefecture. For (4), guidelines were developed in 17 prefectures. Furthermore, implementation of information exchange meetings correlates with the number of municipalities and ratio of private forest, and exchanging of staff members and developing guidelines correlate with the amount of the allocated forest environment transfer tax.