1990년대 이후 정부별 소득세 개편이 세부담 및 소득재분배에 미친 효과 분석

This paper is to estimate and compare the distributions of income and income tax incidence derived by the changes in related tax laws by the administrative governments from YoungSam (YS) through DaeJoong (DJ) and Muhyeon (MH) to MyungBak (MB) administrative governments in Korea in terms of distributional characteristics and income redistribution. The administrative governments emphasizing equity and redistribution issues tended to change the related tax laws towards increasing progressivity of income tax burden, while those emphasizing efficiency and competition of the economy tended to relieve income tax burden. The redistributive effects through personal income taxation became smaller in the YS, DJ and MB administrative governments, while they were inflated in the MH administrative government. The redistributive effects turned out to depend heavily on the changes in effective income tax rates. Unlike the perception conceived by the general public, the progressivity of tax burden is negatively correlated with its income redistributive effects. This is mainly because the progressivity of income tax is too high in Korea. High progressivity implies high concentration of income tax burden. In order to increase the redistributive effects of income tax, it is recommended to increase the income tax revenue especially of the middle income classes the effective tax burdens of which are quite low. This can be done by lowering the income tax exemption level. In this case, it is inevitable to face lowered progressivity and potentially severe tax resistance.