This study started with the conception that the tax system determines the level of tax-payers' consciousness of their tax obligation, and therefore that the social justice at large can be enhanced through improvement of people's consciousness of tax....
This study started with the conception that the tax system determines the level of tax-payers' consciousness of their tax obligation, and therefore that the social justice at large can be enhanced through improvement of people's consciousness of tax. The current transfer income tax system dictates that the transferred balance of income should be calculated in reference to the reference market price or actual transaction price for the acquisition or transferred price.
However, the reference market prices do not seem to reflect the actual prices, while the actual transaction prices cannot be well checked. As a result, the original objective of the transfer income tax - taxing the excessive unearned incomes - cannot be achieved effectively. In fact, there are many loopholes for tax evasions in the current transfer income tax system, confusing people's consciousness of the tax obligation. Accordingly, the current transfer income tax system should be urgently reformed.
The transfer income tax system has been criticized by those who argue that transferred income is not a real income or a base of tax, or supported by those arguing that transferred income may add up to net assets. Most of the advanced nations regard the transferred income as income or base of taxation. On the other hand, the transferred incomes as tax base can be divided into three categories: an income which can be added up to the composite income to be subject to the progressive income tax system, an income which should be subject to a set of taxing rates different from the those of the composite tax, or an income which will not be taxed in principle.
In addition, the transfer income taxes will have considerable effects on supply and demand in the real estate markets, capital markets, distribution of resources, inflationary pressure, land price and income distribution.
The current transfer income tax system may be characterized by (1) categorical taxations, (2) dual structure of transferred income calculations, (3) effects of checking the real estate speculations and enhancing the effective real estate uses, (4) various exemptions and reductions and (5) voluntary reports on real estate transactions.
Since introduced for the first time on April 1, 1948 to tax the capital gains through land transactions, the transfer income tax system has been subject to several amendment. However, because the tax environment has continued to be weak, the tax has been levied on the reference market prices. Now that nation's scale of economy has drastically expanded, people's consciousness of their tax obligation seems to be mature enough to agree to a new reasonable transfer income tax system.
In this context, the problems of our transfer income tax system are addressed and thereupon, their solutions are put forwards as follows;
First, the transferred income needs to be calculated in a more transparent way. Currently, the actual transaction prices are referred to only in such special cases as retransfer during a short period of time, and in the other cases the reference market prices are applied. Since the reference market price does not well reflect the real prices and moreover, the gap of price level between date of the announcement and that of the transactions is dismissed, it is urgently needed to amend the code to calculate the actual transferred incomes. However, even if the transferred incomes should be calculated based on the actual transaction prices, the possibility of a taxation disorder still remains unless some principle of transparency is insured. In order to solve such a problem, it may well be necessary to record the transaction prices in the "ownership section", Chapter "A" of the real estate registry.
Second, it is suggested that the problems involving the deduction of transfer incomes should be solved through readjustment of the deduction rates for longer ownership of the real estates, expansion of the basic deduction scope for transferred incomes, and introduction of a new deduction system per period of the real estate ownership. Since the transfer income tax is levied on the incomes accumulated for years, the taxed amount may be unfairly higher. In order to solve such a problem, it is deemed necessary to arrange the deduction rates by kind of real estate. For example, the current special deduction rates for long ownership of real estate are specified "10%", "15%" and "30%", respectively for the periods of ownership "3 years or longer", "5 years or longer" and "10 years or longer". But it will be more reasonable if "10%" basic deduction rate for the period of ownership "3 years or longer" should be set with each annual "3%" increase within the limit of "30%". On the other hand, the current tax code stipulates that as much as 2.5 million wons can be deducted only once for the year when the real estate is transferred. But such a level of deduction needs to be reduced to one million wons but only once for the year only if the transferred real estate has been owned for 2 years or longer
Then, each real ee can be guaranteed for up to 1 million won income. The researcher would like to argue that each "1%" of the transferred incomes should be deducted per year of ownership, because the nominal incomes had better be excluded to calculate out the redundant incomes.
Third, complicated exemptions and reductions need to be rearranged. For a good example, the provision of "one family, one house" should be rewritten because it does not reflect the reality. In addition, the scope of apartment houses exempt from the transfer income tax needs to be narrowed to the floor area of 50㎡ or less. In case of independent houses, the scope should be narrowed to the extended area of 80㎡ or less. It is unfair to tax only the parts of the luxurious houses exceeding the exemption scope, so the entire transferred income from the transaction of such houses needs to be taxed at progressive rates of 10 ∼20%, in order to help distribute the apartment houses of smaller scales, while checking luxurious and wasteful living. After all, the exemptions and reductions of the transfer income tax should be drastically narrowed, particularly for the real estates of less public nature. The current wide exemptions and reductions may serve to complicate the tax system, impeding the fair taxations. Moreover, such exemptions and reductions may be loopholes for corporates to evade tax and make less efforts to sharpen their competitive edges.
Fourth, the real estate transfer report system needs to be reinstated. Since the current transfer income tax system is based on tax payers' voluntary report on their transferred incomes, it is contradictory by nature. In short, the report system should be abolished in principle. If the government still wants to serve the tax payers, it may well guide them in writing the report forms. Even if the current report system should be maintained, any erroneous reporting needs to be remedied in favor of or against tax payers. For responsibility should not be transferred from tax officials to tax payers. Therefore, the relevant tax code should be urgently revised to make the tax payers free from the erroneous penalties or deductions not attributable to them.
Lastly, the real estates transferred on and after January 1, 2000 are subject not to the unilateral taxation but to the voluntary report/payment system. The new system must be more democratic, but it assumes honest tax payers or a system checking dishonest reporting. In addition, the tax investigation should be designed to thoroughly check out any dishonest reporters, and trace the tax evasions to the end for materialization of a fair taxation.
Any tax code would not be perfect, because it can't all predict every condition as economy changes to create a new order of transactions. In other words, if a tax code is some imperfect, it would be operated for the benefits of tax payers and government once tax officials, policy makers and tax payers join their efforts to realize a social justice through fair taxation.