Request for re-investigation

A request to the administrative agency (行政庁) that made a disposition (処分) to look into it again. A person who objects to the disposition can make one only where a request for review (審査請求) of it can be made to another agency and an Act provides that this request can be made, and not once the person has made a request for review of it (Administrative Complaint Review Act, Article 5, paragraph (1)). Another Act can set rules of its own for it (Article 1, paragraph (2)): the Act on General Rules for National Taxes, for instance, lets a person who objects to a disposition of a district director (税務署長) as a rule choose between a request for re-investigation to that director and a request for review to the President of the National Tax Tribunal (国税不服審判所長) (Act on General Rules for National Taxes, Article 75, paragraph (1), item (i)). Under the Administrative Complaint Review Act, it must be made within three months of the day after the person learned of the disposition and within a year of the disposition, unless there is a justifiable reason (Administrative Complaint Review Act, Article 54). A person who has made one cannot make a request for review until the agency has decided it, unless three months pass from the day after it was made — or, where the agency ordered a defect in it corrected, the day after the correction — without a decision, or there is another justifiable reason (Article 5, paragraph (2)); where it is still pending after those three months, the agency must tell the person in writing that they can make a request for review straight away (Article 57). The agency decides it by a decision (決定): it dismisses a request that is unlawful, for instance one made too late, rejects one that is groundless, and, where one is well founded, revokes the disposition in whole or in part or changes it, though never to the disadvantage of the person who made the request; where it is about a de facto act (事実上の行為), the decision instead declares the act unlawful or unjust and abolishes it in whole or in part or changes it (Articles 58 and 59). Unless the decision revokes the whole disposition or abolishes the whole of a de facto act, it must tell the person that a request for review can be made — after a dismissal, only where the dismissal was unlawful — to which agency and within what time (Article 60, paragraph (2)); that request for review must be made within one month of the day after the person learned of the decision and within a year of the decision, unless there is a justifiable reason (Article 18, paragraphs (1) and (2)).