상속세법상 유사상장법인 비교평가 방법의 적절성에 관한 연구

Inheritance & Gift Tax Law in Korea provides the method for evaluating unlisted stocks through weighted average of asset value and earnings value (Complementary Evaluation Method, CEM), since it is difficult to determine the market value of unlisted stocks. This CEM is characterized by a uniform method that relies upon substitution of past financial data for a certain formula without CEnsidering any eCEnomic phenomena of business entity. That is why it causes overestimation or underestimation about value of unlisted stocks, for that reason, a series of criticisms concerned about potential violations of Equity on Tax Burden have been proposed. Therefore, if taxpayers claim that it is irrational to apply CEM to evaluate their unlisted stocks, they could be allowed to request the application of so-called ‘the Evaluation Method in Comparison with Similar Listed Corporation (hereinafter called Comparison Method [CM])’ by tax law, so as to calculate the value of unlisted stocks in comparison with similar listed corporation to their company. However, this method has a disadvantage in that it is subject to strict application standards such as return on equity (ROE) specified as a part of application requirements, conventional academic literatures have reported that there were only very few companies applying CM. Thus, this study focused on investigating into potential results of stock value estimation on the supposition that return on assets (ROA) is applied as alternative index for ROE in CEM, particularly focusing on the following points:First, this study sought to analyze potential effects of ROA-based estimated stock values on improving any bias of stock values estimated by CEM, and determine if it could involve low value of variance. Secondly, this study sought to examine if there could be more companies relying upon CM on the basis of ROA than ROE, and if there could be increasing differences in the estimated stock values between CEM and CM on the basis of ROA than ROE. This study adopted both literature review and empirical analysis. And the empirical analysis covered unlisted corporations in Korea from 2005 to 2007 (during total 3 years). The results of this study can be summed up as follows:First, it was found that in case of CM, the reflection of ROA-based stock values estimated with CEM was more effective in improving any bias of stock values than that of ROE-based stock values estimated with CEM. According to test results, it was found that ROA-based stock values estimated with CFM were about 50% higher on average than ROE- based ones estimated with CFM, and the standard deviations of ROA- based stock values estimated with CFM were almost 4 times higher than those of ROE- based ones. These findings mean that ROA-based stock values estimated with CM can effectively replace the stock values estimated with CFM which are more biased than ROE-based stock values estimated with CM. Secondly, it was found that ROA-based estimation of stock values was more effective in significantly increasing number of companies subject to CM than ROE-based estimation of stock values. And it was found that the number of companies subject to ROE-based estimation totaled 329, but that of those subject to ROA-based estimation became more than double to total 721. Therefore, these findings suggest that it is advisable that our governmental authorities should apply ROA rather than ROE to increase the number of companies targeted by CM. Despite significant findings, this study requires further investigations in near future and has the following limitations and challenges:First, this study is not free from any error in deduction of correct results, because it just adopts net income listed on balance sheets in calculating both asset value and return value, even without allowing for either fair value or tax reconciliation of targeted companies. Secondly, on the basis of findings obtained herein, it is advisable that follow-up studies focus on investigating if it would be appropriate for Article 13 of the National Tax Service Ordinance to provide a restriction on more than 30% in difference of estimated values, ultimately with a view to expanding the number of companies targeted by CM. Thirdly, it is generally known that unlisted corporations have limited liquidity, because they have no open market at all. Therefore, evaluation of these unlisted stocks in comparison with freely exchangeable stocks of listed companies is problematic in itself. Hence, it is necessary for a new follow-up study to investigate the rate of discount on the estimated value by measuring all losses resulting from limited liquidity of unlisted stocks.