교육세 납세의무와 과세표준의 문제점과 개선방안- 금융․보험업을 중심으로 -

Recently, South Korea's National Tax Service has lost in a series of Supreme Court cases on education tax with financial institutions. These cases were mostly started in 2010 between the NTS and banks and resulted all in NTS failures. Education lawsuits between the NTS and banks are characterized in two large aspects. One is related to the scope of the obligation to pay education tax and the other is related to the education tax base. From hereunder, this thesis points out some problems of South Korea's education tax law by focusing on the debate between the NTS and banks. Most of the lawsuits on education tax between the NTS and banks started from 2010. Education tax disputes, as explained before, are characterized into to different points. First is what is the scope of education tax base when a bank operates a credit-card business together. In this case, the controversy arises from the matter whether a financial institution's profit from secondary undertakings falls under the education tax base. The second point of dispute is whether a specific profit amount is included in the currently identified profit amount in regards the education tax base. Problems in imposing education tax on banks have been pointed out several times before. In the recent case between the NTS and banks, the current education tax system of the country exposed following problems: Law amendments show no consistency in listing people liable for tax payment. During the 2003 South Korean credit card crunch, the issue was raised to impose education tax on credit card companies where had been exempted from VAT. But it was only in 2008 when the tax act was actually amended. As for securities companies, the reason that they were excluded from the education tax base was double taxation with security transaction tax. By including these securities firms in the education tax base for a taxation equity issue, the regulatory consistency was compromised. As discussed in this thesis, if the rules on people liable for education tax payment had been realigned during the merger between a credit card company and a certain bank, we would have seen no conflict with financial institutions. Regarding the identification of people liable for education tax payment, more consistent standard should be presented in consideration of VAT exemption regulations and securities transactional tax imposition. In listing tax base, the current system does not use profit amount in settlement as it is but lists other excluded amounts from tax together, posing difficulty in calculating the tax base. As the case study shows, it is hard to legally determine if loan sales profits are included in tax base or not. That is, to define taxable amount and non-taxable amount at the same time requires lots of adjustment in setting tax base. In this consideration, it seems appropriate to recognize every possible amount as taxable at first and then exclude amounts that are hard to regard as actual profits. Such problems as mentioned above reveal the need to overhaul South Korea's education tax act as well as comprehensive analysis and improvements.