지방분권과 국가균형발전의 조화를 위한 정책대안 탐색 -재산세 제도의 개선을 통한 재정분권과 국가균형발전 모색- = A Study of Promoting Both Decentralization and National Even Development: Attempting to Increase The Effective Property Tax Rate in Korea

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study attempts to provide policy alternatives of promoting both decentralization and national even development. It assumes that it has been not easy to harmonize decentralization and balanced development across the country. The unbalanced distribution of tax bases among regions would promote the fiscal disparities as the fiscal responsibility is getting taken over local governments. There have been as many policy agendas as the problem being identified since the local autonomy system was introduced in Korea. One of those measures is to introduce the local consumption tax which is expected to bring more revenues to local government and the other is related to local income tax. Both policy alternatives aim to generate extra revenues for local governments so that they can spend more at their will. However, the gains are estimated to be unevenly distributed among local governments. This national government will increase the ratio of general revenue sharing to block the growing fiscal disparity among regions. This study suggests to reform the property tax system: First, it should reform the method of estimating the taxable value. Second, it should also increase the tad rate. Third, the study recommends to promote the effective tax rate. This study employs a case study for a better understanding. The case of New York State is introduced for a comparison and for generating a policy implication. The increased effective property tax rate would stabilize the real estate market and generate extra tax revenues. Those revenues could be redistributed among regions according to the equalization principle, which is being applied in the State of California and New York State. The method of distributing the property tax revenues, however, is quite controversial in that the property tax meets best the principle of local tax, if applied, it would narrow the market property values between capital regions and others and also reserve more financial resources for undeveloped areas. Further studies will compare the methods of estimating taxable values more scientifically and focuses on the estimation of optimal rate of property tax.