국가공기업에 대한 지방세 감면의 문제점과 개선방안

Although local governments have reduced and exempted local taxes such as acquisition tax, property tax, and so on, to national public enterprises, the central government has levied the corporate tax, i.e., a national tax, on local public enterprises. Such an irrational tax incentive system between national taxes and local taxes against national public enterprises has aggravated the financial strains of the local government. In addition, some people point out that national public enterprises have benefited from the reduction and exemption of local taxes, while they have not contributed to relevant local communities correspondingly. In this context, the purpose of the study is to evaluate the validity of the policy of reducing and/or exempting local taxes against national public enterprises and to figure out how to remedy the current status. First of all, the currently emerged issues related to the reduction and/or exemption of local taxes against national public enterprises are as follows: The first issue is that the criteria of reducing and/or exempting taxes against national public enterprises have not been defined appropriately. In general, a public enterprise has to run based on two principles of dominance: public concern and entrepreneurship. However, national public enterprises in Korea have been classified into various classes according to their degrees of public concern and entrepreneurship, such as market oriented public enterprises, quasi market oriented public enterprises and so on. In spite of such diversity, there are no clear-cut criteria on the reduction and/or exemption of local taxes based on the classification of national public enterprises. Second, there are issues of equity on the reduction and/or exemption of national taxes levied on local public enterprises. In other words, there have been some discrepancies from the aspect of equity in the reduction and/or exemption of national taxes such as corporate tax against local public enterprises and those of local taxes against national public enterprises. Third, as the amount of reduced and/or exempted local taxes has grown continuously, it is apprehended that the level of financial self-sufficiency of local governments might be aggravated, which in turn might deter the supply of local public goods and services. Fourth, as the Tax Reduction and Exemption Control Act and the Local Reduction and Exemption Control Act, which regulate the reduction and/or exemption of local taxes were designed and enacted mainly for the central government, there are some possibilities of infringing the security of independent taxation rights of local governments. Fifth, the distinctions between the direct reduction and/or exemption of taxes against national public enterprises and that of general taxes have been ambiguous, while there might be some issues, such as continual renewal of the time duration of applying the tax reduction and/or exemption, and so on. Accordingly, in the study, the author puts forward the following points concerning the reduction and/or exemption of local taxes:First, it would be necessary to formulate criteria on the reduction and/or exemption of taxes or on the transfer in type of taxation against public institutions such as national public enterprises based on their degree of public concern and/or entrepreneurships. Especially, for market oriented public enterprises and quasi market oriented public enterprises, it would be necessary as much as possible to reject them from designating as subjects of the reduction and/or exemption of taxes because they are public enterprises. Such reduction and/or exemption of taxes should be applied case by case based on their purposes. For public enterprises, which need to enhance their competitive advantages by enhancing entrepreneurship, it would be necessary to convert their type of taxation on the preferential basis to take out the benefits of reducing and/or exempting local taxes. Second, concerning tax reduction and/or exemption by use for national public enterprises, it would be required to apply the criteria identical to those applied to general companies, except public institutions including some national public enterprises designated to reduce and/or exempt taxes. That is, the taxation types of most national public enterprises should be converted to full taxation not to infringe independent taxation rights of local governments. However, it might be necessary for local governments to take into account their unique characteristics based on their local ordinance on the reduction and/or exemption of local taxes to decide whether to provide tax reduction and/or exemption benefits to some national public enterprises. Third, when the taxation type of every national public enterprise is converted to full taxation, if each local government enacts a unique and different regulation on tax reduction and/or exemption, then it might deteriorate the equity in taxation. To cope with such cases, it would be required to provide provisions on tax reduction and/or exemption into the Local Tax Reduction and Exemption Control Act. For other areas, the independent taxation right of each local government shall be respected. Fourth, when the taxes reduced and/or exempted for national public enterprises are concentrated on several local governments, it would be necessary to devise a plan of supporting a portion of the reduced and/or exempted taxes by the central government.