The Japanese Olympic Committee has been slapped with around 2 billion yen ($13 million) in additional taxes after tax authorities found improper accounting between fiscal 2018 and 2022, it said Wednesday.

There was a difference of opinion over the JOC's expenses and the timing of recognizing its revenues, the Tokyo-based committee said, but it has revised its tax declaration and paid the additional levies to the Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau.

"It is very regrettable. But we will do our utmost to ensure a similar thing will never happen again," Takahiro Kitano, a senior executive board member of the committee, told reporters.

An additional penalty tax has not been imposed, the JOC said, in an apparent sign that the bureau judged the committee did not intentionally hide income or manipulate its accounts.

During the bureau's investigation, the JOC argued its accounting was appropriate, noting it had outsourced its corporate tax calculation to a tax accountancy and been audited both by its own auditor and also an outside entity.

Kitano said, however, that the committee chose to pay the additional taxes because disputing the tax authorities' decision "would cost us a tremendous amount of work, time and money."

The JOC is a public interest corporation and some of its businesses are exempt from taxation. Its ordinary revenue came to 15.4 billion yen and the total payment of corporate and other taxes was 180 million yen at the end of the fiscal year to March 2023.

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