주주 과세에 있어서 배당세액공제를 통한 조세중립성 추구의 한계와 과제

The shareholders of corporation, the owner of corporation, is entitled to corporate income. The corporate taxation for the corporate income causes a variety of economic distortions, such as different tax treatments between corporate entity and non-corporate entity, between equity and debt, between retained earning and distributed earning and between dividend and stock repurchase. Such distortions impair tax neutrality and economic efficiency. The efforts have been made to fix the economic distortions by integrating the corporate tax and the individual income tax. The types for integration are various which have been proposed or implemented. The partial integration is focused on solving the problem of double taxation of corporate tax and individual income tax for dividend income, which is called dividend relief. The full integration addresses not only dividend income but also capital gains of shareholders. The imputation method adopted by Section 17 ③ of The Individual Income Tax Act is a type of partial integration. The imputation method is premised on taxation for corporation. The imputation method has its limit in solving a variety of problems of non-neutrality caused by corporate tax because it concentrates on double taxation of dividend income and corporate income. However the fundamental reason for non-neutrality lies in taxation for corporation. This suggests us how to enhance the tax neutrality in taxation based on the corporate income. In this article, two exemplary measures are proposed for integration. One is for partial integration and the other is for full integration. The first one is a kind of imputation method, however the gross-up is not by 11% of dividend income, but by allocation of the real amount of corporate tax. The main structure of the second one is (ⅰ) non-taxation for corporation, (ⅱ) shareholder taxation for corporate income, (ⅲ) shareholder taxation for corporate income formed after the acquisition of stock by the shareholder, (iv) taxation on realization of income by corporation, (v) tax payment financed by corporation, (vi) allocation of tax credit for shareholder, (vii) adjustment of tax credit on dividend distribution, share transfer, liquidation of corporation, etc in order to avoid double taxation.