퇴직연금 세제 체계 및 개선과제에 관한 연구

This study investigates the problems related the tax structure of retirement pension plan and suggests the direction to reform it after analyzing and comparing the tax structure of retirement pension plans in countries which adopted the retirement pension plan a long while ago such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan. After the new retirement pension plan was introduced in December, 2005 in Korea, the participation rate is still low due to the low level of tax deductible for the employee's contribution. Another major problem is that the employees receive the severance pay in a lump-sum due to generous tax benefits for the lump-sum relative to annuity. We propose the tax structure of retirement pension plan in Korea which is mixed between EET(exempt-exempt-taxed) and TEE(taxed-exempt-exempt) system should be restructured into EET. And the tax deductible for the employee's contribution for the retirement pension should be separated with the contribution for her/his personal pension and increasing the tax benefit for the contribution which is low relative to other countries will boost the participation rate and the level of contribution. However, it would be applicable to differentiate the level of tax deductible for the contribution according to the level of income in order to obstruct the affluent of abusing the tax benefits. It is also necessary to abolish the generous tax benefit for the lump sum distribution.