On 29 March 2016, Japan's National Diet (legislature) passed the bill for the 2016 tax reform ({News-2015-12-17/P/2- previous coverage}). The main measures of the reform are summarized as follows.

Corporate Tax Rate

The statutory corporate tax rate is reduced from 23.9% to 23.4% effective 1 April 2016, and will be further reduced to 23.2% in 2018. In addition, the enterprise tax rate is redu…