A smart inheritance tax app called "Smart Souzoku" together with Epson Connect lets ordinary middle-class families easily draw up complex gift contracts

■Osamu Shinoda
Representative and CPA/Licensed Tax Accountant, Osamu Shinoda Tax Accounting Office

■Shou Ichikawa
Software Engineer, Grandream Inc.

■Interviewer: Sayaka Morimoto
P Strategic Planning Department, Seiko Epson Corporation

*Honorifics omitted in article

Morimoto: Start by telling me about the Smart Souzoku service LINE app.

Shinoda: At my tax accounting office, our mission is to make it simple for ordinary middle-class families to manage inheritance and gifts. With that in mind, the service we are offering is based on a new concept. It stands at the intersection of insight into what the baby boom generation needs and LINE as a platform widely used by them.
The Smart Souzoku service brings inheritance and gift-giving know-how and convenient functions to Japan's first baby boom generation (those born between 1947 and 1949) and the second (between 1971 and 1974) through their smartphones. Users need only answer yes-or-no questions on the app to draw up gift contracts. Two other functions, "recommended gift type analysis" and "for-fee contact printing," have also been released in the first version of the service.

Morimoto: What inspired the Smart Souzoku concept?

Shinoda: When my father passed away in 2016, we couldn't get much inheritance-related information that fit our case. Moreover, the licensed tax accountant I hired was also not accustomed to our situation, so the whole inheritance procedure was very stressful for us.
I had a 20-year career as an accountant, which included working as the CFO of a tech venture business. Even so, I spent a year learning about taxes and procedures related to inheritances and gifts, and then in 2018 I became registered as a licensed tax accountant. Over the years, I accumulated business experience, IT know-how, and tax knowledge, and wondered if I could offer some new value by joining these together. That led to the prototype of the current Smart Souzoku concept.

Morimoto: So the idea was the product of your own experience. On the Smart Souzoku site, you use a typical ordinary middle-class family, "the Smarts," as an example to guide salaried workers and their families. The site explains the whole process from the event that triggered the inheritance (a death in the family) to payment of the inheritance tax. It's all very easy to understand. Why did you decide to make ordinary middle-class families as your target?

Shinoda: Because in most cases, the inheritance procedure is rather simple for ordinary middle-class families. If they can increase their inheritance literacy, they can carry out a "smart" inheritance process by themselves. The inheritance tax system relies on self-assessed tax payments. Following the same reasoning as final returns on income tax, the person must decide for themselves whether they need to report. Tax offices and local government offices don't tell you that you need to report, but they also won't accept the excuse that you didn't realize you had to report. In our lives, we unconsciously factor in income tax, for example, when women think about the ¥1.03 million cap on wages to be considered a dependent, or when deciding whether to get life insurance or a home loan. I hope these outcomes have the same effect when it comes to inheritance tax. If we incorporate inheritance tax logic into our lives, it makes it easier for the surviving spouse to make decisions, such as how to use their assets, whether to give gifts to their grandchildren, whether to take an expensive trip, or whether to choose a nursing home with more room. This logic gives you the knowledge that a typical ordinary middle-class family would need to be prepared and avoid losses.

Morimoto: Nowadays, many companies are digitizing their documents, even contracts. Why do you offer a printing service?

Shinoda: Because I think printing on paper has some big advantages in the home. The key points are legibility, permanence, and eventfulness.
Let's start with legibility. Many times, heirs and family members have age-related farsightedness. When you are looking over a contract, it's much easier to view it on paper. Paper also makes it easier for the family to gather around and run through the contract together. It's hard for multiple people in a living room to all look at one screen.
The next point is permanence. Paper is convenient for long-term keeping of a contract in the home. For tax purposes, a gift contract must be kept for at least seven years after the person's death. When you think about long-term storage, paper is easier to find than a digital file.
The last point is eventfulness. With a gift contract or other contract within a family, paper has secondary advantages over digital because when it is printed, family members can sign and affix a seal to it. Children and grandchildren can better appreciate the value of a contract signed and sealed by their own hand.

Morimoto: Now I'd like to ask some questions of Mr. Ichikawa of Grandream, the app developer. You decided to use the Epson Connect API as the print service for Smart Souzoku. Were you already considering the ability to print from the app when you started planning?

Ichikawa: When you try to batch-print multiple files from a web application, there will be a dialogue for each file if you are using standard printing functions. From the UX point of view, I wanted to avoid that. You could merge files, but I also wanted to avoid having to download a bloated file, so we researched and considered other ways to avoid those situations. That's when we found the Epson Connect API, which had exactly the functions we were looking for. By using the Epson Connect API, we eliminated the need to click the print button again and again during batch-printing and we achieved a function that lets you check print status in real time.

Morimoto: Finally, is there anything you would like to say about new functions you are presently studying, or your outlook for the app?

Shinoda: I predict that interest in inheritance and gifts is going to grow even more because of the so-called 2025 problem. That's the year when the entire first baby boom generation will be latter-stage elderly (ages 75 and up). This is not very far away. Along with that, the trend toward longer life expectancy shows no sign of stopping. As more and more people live to 100 or more, they are increasingly worried about having enough funds in their old age.