The tax revenue of Japanese municipalities, excluding Tokyo's 23 wards, amounted to 17.7 trillion yen in FY2009. This is 92.8% of the determined collection amount. The tax collection expenditure, 559 billion yen, was equivalent to 3.16% of the revenue amount. Raising the tax revenue requires increasing tax collection costs at the same time. This paper focuses on calculating the relationship between the net tax revenue and the tax collection costs. As the calculated result, we can see that there is not necessarily larger room for raising the tax revenue in the lower ranked municipalities based on the tax collection ratio.

This analysis evaluates values of 3 types of container and packaging recycling behavior using count data models and the individual travel cost method (ITCM) based on survey data. The estimation results show the consumer surplus of recycling drink boxes at 234.95 yen/kg, PET bottles at 132.42 yen/kg and plastic trays at 90.43 yen/kg and the result of cost-benefit analysis indicates that the cost of PET bottle recycling outweighs the benefit. The empirical estimations also show that variables of sex, age, number of families, children in the household, environmental awareness and neighborhood activities effect recycling behavior as well as travel costs for going to recycle boxes. The result from the benefit evaluation indicates a need for the reform of the PET bottle recycling policy based on producer responsibility.