부동산 양도소득세의 계산을 위한 기준시가의 경제적 의의 = Economic Significance of Base Prices for Calculating Real Estate Capital Gains

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study has investigated an intriguing question of why the Korean Taxing Authority allows taxpayers two options in paying capital gains taxes (CGT): one option is to calculate CGT according to the base prices predetermined by the Taxing Authority (Option 1), and the other option is based on real transaction values (Option 2). Using the game-theoretic method, this study has analyzed taxpayers` decisions to choose between the two options, and the Taxing Authority`s decisions as to the determination of optimal base prices and the likelihood of conducting an audit when a taxpayer has chosen Option 2. It has been demonstrated that if the Taxing Authority determines the base price in order to maximize tax revenues, it will set it at a maximum level so that no taxpayers would have incentives to choose Option 1, impling that Option 1 is of no economic significance. From observing that there exist many taxpayers choosing Option 1 in the real world, this suggests that the current CG tax regime does not stand on the tax-revenue-maximization premise. Therefore, this study has attempted to discover the economic significance of Option 1 from another perspective: social loss perspective. First, it has been shown that the expected cost (i.e., expected tax liability plus expected penalty for underreporting of CGT) borne by the taxpayers who choose Option 2 is greater than the Tax Authority`s expected revenue. This implies that only a portion of the taxpayers` expected cost is transferred to the Tax Authority, the remainder being wasted in the process of collecting taxes. This waste of economic resources is a social loss. In contrast, such a social loss will not be incurred if taxpayers choose Option 1 because there is no need to conduct audits for them. This study has further demonstrated that the social loss under the current tax regime is lower than that under the tax-revenue-maximizing regime. Further, this study has adopted two criteria in consideration of the balance between the social loss and tax revenue, and has derived the base prices satisfying each criterion. It has been shown that such base prices are much lower than the tax-revenue- maximizing base price, and that Option 1 is preferable to Option 2 for some taxpayers. These results indicate that the current tax regime has economic significance in the sense of reducing social loss.