JASDEC says that the US tax authorities have clarified the categorisation of dematerialised Samurai bonds and had categorised them as “registered bonds” under the US taxation. The categorisation makes the interest payments regarding the dematerialised Samurai bonds issued by US issuers to non-US investors not withholding tax-exempt in US, except in a limited cases.
JASDEC also announced that it will begin to dematerialise Samurai bonds issued by US issuers as early as March 2007 (on the coupon payment date for a Samurai bond issue in March 2007), now that the tax issues are clarified. The dematerialisation of Samurai bonds issued by US issuers have been pending because the tax related issues in U.S. remained not clear.