Due to the current globalization, the exchange of human and material resources has got more active to make the relocation of residence more frequent and domestic and foreign investment in real estate by both resident and non-resident increase. Accordi...
Due to the current globalization, the exchange of human and material resources has got more active to make the relocation of residence more frequent and domestic and foreign investment in real estate by both resident and non-resident increase. Accordingly, death takes place in such various different conditions as site of inherited property or residence or nationality of inheritor and inheritee, which is normally called International Inheritance, when the issue of taxation authority allocation rises, that is, which nation will tax the inherited property, so-called International Inheritance Taxation.
The issue of international inheritance taxation is to decide which nation will exercise the taxation authority to the inherited property, and in other words, it is to decide which nation the tax should be payed to. Since each nation tries to expand the scope of its taxation authority as far as possible while tax payers try to pay as little tax as possible, international inheritance taxation becomes the issue of taxation authority allocation between two nations as well as that of deciding rational tax burden between taxation object and tax payer.
As a result, as for international inheritance taxation like other sectors of international taxation, double taxation may occur due to competition for tax and taxation authority in order to secure taxation authority of its own nation between the nation where the going-to-be tax payer resides and that where the inherited property is located. Also, there is the possibility that tax payers avoid or evade tax with the help of tax haven or any nation with low tax rate.
To propose the following improvement plans, this study researched the issues of tax revenue management and property valuation when taxing domestic inherited property of non-resident and overseas inherited property of non-resident, the cause of tax avoidance and the issue of international double taxation and the problem of international double taxation on the ground of international inheritance taxation according as the international inheritance are increasing owing to internationalization and globalization.
First, for management of tax revenue of non-residents' domestic inherited property, which can be an improvement plan for it, in case of the real property nominal trust, it should be regarded as the trustee's property, the grace period should be curtailed, the improvement of Act of Substantial Named Registration such as abolition of exceptional policies should be carried out and the computerized record related to real property ownership should be unified along with the construction of Data Base by person and household so that the status of property holding may be intensively managed. Furthermore, it is also necessary that the Real Name Financial Transaction Law be improved so that the nominee of financial account might be considered to be the owner, financial transaction data for more than specific amount be reported to National Tax Service, and the collected data be subject to accumulation management. As for art works, the system where owners themselves register and their distribution process will be transparent should be established. It should become mandatory that at the time of capital stock change, the statements on capital stock change of all the stockholders be reported to the court or its relevant corporation and the status of change to stock holding be controlled accumulatively in the long term. The system for art-work owners to register should be established so that the process of its distribution might be transparent.
Second, for the improvement of the system for evaluating domestic inherited property of non-residents, a legalization is necessary to make principle of no taxation without law and equality of tax burden principle harmonized, and inheritance and gift tax act should define a general scope so that the legalization may be applied elastically depending on any situation within the scope of not infringing fundamental rights, and furthermore, a legal improvement is necessary that the regulations for property valuation should be handed over to general rules for valuation. In addition, a new definition on market price should be introduced so that it can be evaluated as a fair market value commonly transacted in markets for diversification of standards on market price valuation and its elastic operation. It is very desirable that the regulation on the market value for transaction case price be abolished. And also the system of prior approval for market price should be adopted. The valuation methods and standards for unlisted stocks should be diversified and improved to fit for international standards by introducing valuation discount system and mitigating valuation premium system. High level of theoretical expertise and technique as well as hands-on-background are to be required for the evaluating process of stocks.
Third, for an improvement plan of foreign inheritance taxation of residents, information exchange through multilateral cooperation and by treaty as well as international assistance for management of tax revenue of residents' foreign inherited property should be expanded so that accumulation of data by collecting any gains abroad and information on foreign accounts should be focused on. Nowadays, the objects of abroad financial account report in Korea are only overseas savings and listed stocks, but its scope should be expanded so that the list of overseas property including unlisted stocks, bonds, beneficiary certificates, derivatives and real property of more than specified amount may be reported, the supervisory regulation of foreign exchange dealings is needed to be reinforced, and the scope of reporting object for bank account dispersion should be narrowed a lot for it to be expanded. Moreover, the regulation to punish those fail to report overseas financial accounts should be reinforced for security of system effectiveness. From the viewpoi