People are concerned much about the reinforcement of the real estate ownership tax proposed by the current government. The purpose of this study was to review the concept of ownership tax and its changes and thereupon, address the problems of the curr...
People are concerned much about the reinforcement of the real estate ownership tax proposed by the current government. The purpose of this study was to review the concept of ownership tax and its changes and thereupon, address the problems of the current ownership tax system as well as the draft ownership tax system and verify the pros and cons of the new ownership tax system from a neutral point of view. For this purpose, foreign cases, concepts and systems were examined to reconfirm the validity and need of a reinforced ownership tax system, and thereby, conditions for a successful real estate ownership tax were suggested. The real estate tax system is an asset-based tax system with a long history. Ideologically, it is based on land ownership concept and Henry George''s theory. After all, the land ownership concept has evolved into today''s public land concept. The current real estate tax system is operated by phase: acquisition, ownership and transfer. The ownership tax is in turn divided into land ownership and building ownership taxes. It was in 1961 when property tax was separated from the farmland tax that land ownership tax began to be clearly distinguished from land use tax. Later, land ownership tax would develop into property tax for land and evolve into today''s general land tax. From mid-1960''s to recent days, the land ownership tax system had been used together with other land-related taxes to control real estate speculations, prevent land ownerships from being concentrated, distribute industries and population throughout the nation, but its functions were not effective. Thus, it was critically perceived that the land ownership tax system was not successful in controlling the demands for land ownership effectively, and therefore, on the threshold of 1980''s, a new system was introduced to be evolved into the more comprehensive ''general land tax'' system. Nevertheless, the problems involving real estates remain still unsolved, and finally, the current government has proposed a draft land ownership tax system characterized by the general real estate tax. The draft tax system aims to make the property tax reflect on the market price and the general land tax reflect on the announced land price gradually by 50%. Moreover, the general tax system would be dualized; city, county and district offices would tax the lands in their jurisdictions, while the central government would sum up the lands throughout the nation to tax them on a graduated scale. In short, a ''general real estate tax system'' would be introduced. In other words, the government intends to reinforce the real restate ownership tax, which is deemed desirable in consideration of the problems of the current system and the advanced nation''s cases. However, in order to establish the new tax system earlier, it is deemed required of the government to take into consideration the negative public opinions and possible resistance to the tax and thereupon, persuade them, while operating the new system in a reasonable way suitable to the age of governance. Summing up, this study reviewed the changes of the real estate taxes and discussed the directions to reform them, and examined the foreign cases and relevant theories, and thereupon, discussed the validity and need of a reinforced real estate ownership tax system, and thereby, suggested the conditions for a successful establishment of the new system, which need to be considered by the government.