At three AEON Group stores in the Chugoku region, sales of cosmetics and other products that are not exempt from consumption tax due to suspicion of resale or insufficient identity verification of purchasers have been confirmed. An Aeon group company headquartered in Chiba City has been subject to an additional consumption tax of about 250 million yen, including double additional tax, from the Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau, according to an interview with a person concerned.
The additional tax was imposed on Aeon Retail, a group company of major distribution company Aeon, headquartered in Chiba City.
The consumption tax has a system that allows duty-free sales when selling souvenirs and daily necessities to foreign tourists, etc., but it is not permitted if the purpose is to resell or if the identity of the purchaser is insufficient.
However, according to people involved, three stores operated by Aeon Retail in the Chugoku region are selling cosmetics without sufficient identity verification, and are obliged to store them for seven years, according to a tax investigation by the Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau. It is said that inappropriate duty-free sales were confirmed one after another, such as not keeping the purchaser's pledge.
Among them, there are cases where a Chinese international student contacted the store in advance and asked them to prepare a large amount of a specific product, and then purchased hundreds of thousands of yen by themselves. There was also
The Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau pointed out that about 236 million yen of consumption tax was not declared in the five years up to March 2020, and additional taxation including double additional tax and additional tax for underreporting is said to be about 250 million yen. That's it.
In response to NHK's interview, Aeon Retail commented, "We take the indications from the national tax authorities seriously, work on measures to prevent recurrence, and strive to conduct appropriate duty-free sales to prevent this from happening again." .