Since its introduction in 2005, the Comprehensive Real Estate Tax has been revised
several times due to the change of the Korean government's real estate policy. The
significant inflection points were the establishment of the Individual Taxation Princ...
Since its introduction in 2005, the Comprehensive Real Estate Tax has been revised
several times due to the change of the Korean government's real estate policy. The
significant inflection points were the establishment of the Individual Taxation Principles
according to the decision of the Constitutional Court of Korea (2006 Hun-Ba 112, Nov 13,
2008) and the introduction of the Tax Credits.
Recently, however, several issues have been raised with this policy. Firstly, in terms of
fair taxation, differentiation in taxation depending on the purposes and types of holding and
the issue of conformity with other laws have been pointed out. Secondly, in the process of
calculation, the formulation of the assessment standard tax base and the upper limit are
unreasonable. Moreover, the tax-bearing capacity of the taxpayers is not considered.
To improve the impartiality of the Comprehensive Real Estate Holding Tax, the status of
residential and non-residential should be classified by the purposes and types of holding. In
doing so, the government should provide benefits to resident housings and impose a heavy
tax on non-resident housings. With the purpose of maintaining consistency with other laws,
the benefits of temporary two-homeowners should be equally applied to that of Capital
Gains Tax. Moreover, in the long term, real-owners should receive benefits by deducting
the Property Tax and Comprehensive Real Estate Holding Tax from the Capital Gain Tax.
A number of things should be considered to improve the issues related to the tax
calculation process. First, if the current Publicly Announced Prices standard system is
maintained when calculating the base of taxation in the process of tax calculation, an
organization exclusively for evaluating real estate could be installed under the tax law to
increase reliability, or a new reevaluating method could be introduced based on price of
acquisition. Second, the upper limit of the tax burden should be determined based on the
amount of tax paid. Comparative method of minimum tax should be applied in the process
of imposing tax to the new buildings that do not have tax paid in the previous year. Or
in the first year, the upper limit of tax burden is not applied, and it is necessary to pay
taxes through the method of settlement in the second year. Third, the regulation of the
deferment of Payment should consider the tax-bearing capacities of the taxpayers. If one
owns a property with a loan, charging a certain rate of interest during the deferral period
should be considered.
Currently, the new government considers the abolition of the Comprehensive Real Estate
Holding Tax and the unification of the Real Estate Holding Tax System as its major policy
tasks. Such an approach has the advantage of simplifying the current complicated tax
calculation process, however, the basic date of taxation, taxpayer should be reestablished
and taxation jurisdiction over the place of tax paid should be set up rationally.