「조세범 처벌법」상 세금계산서 관련범과 죄수

Along with the enactment of the Value-Added Tax Act on 22 December 1976, a new provision was added to the Punishment of Tax Evaders Act to punish unlawful acts related to tax invoices. The Punishment of Tax Evaders Act only used to penalize criminal acts related to the issuance and receipt of tax invoices that were accompanied by actual transactions. Then, on 22 December 1994 unlawful acts related to the issuance and receipt of tax invoices without actual transactions were added into the applicable scope of the Act. On 31 December 2004, unlawful acts concerning tax invoice summaries also became subject to the Act. On 29 December 2005, Article 8-2 of the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Crimes was enacted, to provide for a severer standard of punishment when the offender committed a tax invoices-related crime “for the purpose of profit” and the “aggregate amount of the supply value, etc.” was KRW 3 billion or more. Meanwhile in 2008, the electronic tax invoice system entered into effect, which caused a complete change to the way of issuance(receipt) of tax invoices. Also, by the amendment of the Value-Added Tax Act, electronic tax invoices became exempt from the obligation to submit tax invoice summaries. Through the series of changes in the relevant laws as demonstrated above, the issues of counting crimes for tax evasion offenses, tax invoices-related offenses, counting crimes for multiple acts of unlawfully receiving(issuing) of tax invoices, and for the two different acts of receiving(issuing) tax invoices and submitting tax invoice summaries became very controversial. The applicable scope of criminal penalty can vary depending on whether the relevant acts are understood as a single crime or multiple crimes. Especially, under the ‘several times amount fining system’ adopted in the current law, the amount of fine might become several times bigger due to the number of crimes that the relevant acts are found to constitute. In addition, the interpretation of the term “aggregate amount of the supply value, etc.” under the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Crimes also became an important issue, as this would determine whether certain acts could fall within the scope of this harsher Act. This paper analyzes how to count the number of crimes for various types of criminal acts related to tax invoices：① tax evasion offenses and tax invoices-related offenses should be understood as separate crimes；② multiple acts concerning the receipt(issuance) of tax invoices that happened during the same taxation period should be viewed as one inclusive crime；③ to determine the applicability of Article 8-2 of the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Crimes, the supply values specified in each tax invoice, invoice, and tax invoice summary should be added together to the extent that all of the relevant acts can be considered to constitute one inclusive crime with a single, continuing criminal intent and with the same crime committing method；④ if a tax invoice is received(issued) and a tax invoice summary is submitted with respect to the same transaction, the two acts should be considered as one single crime under the theory of concurrence of provisions；and ⑤ in the special case of electronic tax invoices, the crimes related to tax invoice summaries are inapplicable, as there can be no acts of submitting tax invoice summaries or any obligations in relation thereto.