A level shifter that prevents through currents thereat, including a holding circuit having an inverter made up of transistors connected between an internal node and a ground potential and an inverter made up of transistors connected between an internal node and the ground potential. These inverters are connected in loop form thereby to hold signals of nodes. Thus, even when input signals complementary to each other originally are both brought to a level “L”, the signals of the nodes are held at the immediately preceding level, thus making it possible to prevent through currents from flowing through the transistors respectively.