공동주택 관리비의 부가가치세 과세문제

Despite of the fact that in a modern society residence, a ratio of an apartment housing prevails over that of a detached house residence and management fees necessary for management and maintenance of an apartment housing accounts for a significantly high ratio of the gross household expenditure, neither general discussions on management fees of apartment housing (the “Management Fees”) such as grounds, scope,main agent and tax payer of the taxation of the Management Fees nor any summary of whether or not to impose a VAT on the Management Fees and method for calculation of assessment standard tax base, etc. have been clearly made. Firstly, this paper examines a generality on the Management Fees and then, looks into how VAT assessment issues regarding the Management Fees are varied depending on methods for an apartment housing management (autonomous management, consignment management)Secondly, the Special Tax Treatment Control Law (the “Law”) sets forth a provision on exemption for VAT regarding general administration cost, security cost and clean-up cost out of consignment management fees of an apartment housing, which leads to interpretative issues whether or not VAT is exempted for general administration cost, security cost and clean-up cost out of gross management fees even if a consignment management agreement is executed based on “gross management fees”pursuant to the Housing Management Contractor and Bidder Instructionsestablished on September 11, 2012. If a housing management contractor satisfies certain qualifications such as conducting its bookkeeping by separating general administration cost, security cost and clean-up cost from other costs, etc., such housing management contractor is still entitled to tax exemption benefits for VAT under the Law. However, exempting some consignment management fees of apartment housing from VAT shall be not only inconsistent with a fundamental purpose of a tax-exemption system that intends to mitigate a regressivity in tax burden but also in breach a tax equalitarianism as it is deemed that there is no essential difference among general administration cost,security cost and clean-up cost with the same contents of service to conduct a differential taxation thereon depending on whether or not a place of supply for such services is apartment housing, and thus, a tax exemption provision for apartment housing shall be abolished.