소득공제 대상인 특별공제 항목의 세액공제 전환에 따른 지출행태의 변화 분석

Using the finance panel data of the Korea Institute of Public Finance, this study investigates whether spending scale of special expenditures items were affected by the adoption of tax credit method instead of deduction method in 2014 by each income class. The deduction method, where the tax saving effect was decided by the marginal tax rate of each household, was of relative advantage to higher income class, while this feature has been diluted under the tax credit method since 2014. Thus, other things being equal, the spending scales of insurance premium, education expense, medical expense and charitable contribution were expected to decline (rise) in higher (lower) income class around the adoption of the tax credit method. The results of this study shows that no significant change in spending behaviors was found for each special expenditure item. However, regardless of the effect of difference among income classes, overall insurance premiums and education expenses increased while overall charitable contributions decreased in 2014, which implies that household spendings for basic risk aversion and increase in education level had been on the rise irrelevant to tax burdens. The decrease in overall charitable contributions can be interpreted to be affected by psychologic depression supported by the expectation of reduced tax saving effect spreaded from higher income class to lower income class. Thus, such non-economic factors like risk aversion, demand for education and medical service, and personal faith appear to have stronger effect on decision making than economic factors.