지방공기업의 정부 및 지자체 업무대행에 대한 부가가치세 면제－지방공사와 지방공단의 차이를 중심으로

Plenty of problems have been raised since the authority to establish local public companies was transferred to local governments in Korea such as reckless expansion, loose management and inefficiency. To tackle such problems, the Ministry of Interior has implemented strong overhauling of local public enterprises since 2010 in line with the measures for the advancement of local public enterprises. The Ministry mainly tried to improve the business administrative practices via merger, etc. of local public enterprises performing overlapping transactions within single local governments. However, unlike local government agencies, merged local public companies were excluded from the VAT exemption for their local government business agency service. As local public companies are required to pay the VAT, greater burden was posed to local finance. Under the additional burden of VAT, some local public companies actually sought to split back again. Such a discussion has the following several issues; First, discriminatory VAT imposition on large－scale project by local government agencies and public companies could be problematic. Even though local public companies and government agencies equally perform the agency service for local governments, etc., the present laws and regulations exempt only the local government agencies from VAT payment. Second, the scope of VAT tax base could be problematic. The issue is whether to regard the payment for agency service as the whole entrustment management expenses including profit or to take only the profit as the payment for service subject to tax base. Third issue is to see whether a local public company is one of the ‘other organizations seeking public interest’ subject to VAT exemption in the VAT law. Local public companies may be regarded as one of the organizations seeking the public interest of local community people’s welfare improvement. Forth, for a local government that sincerely implemented the local public enterprise advancement plan of the central government, it could be illogical to impose VAT on the same work that was previously tax free after merger for a reason that the post－merger organizational structure changed. Fifth, enforcement decree can be amended to help ease the financial burden of local public companies in poor situation. Moreover, it is also deemed positive to make amendment consistently with the policy goals of the existing local public company advancement plan by the Ministry. Still, there exist some administrative flaws. It seems necessary to change the provision of [Annex 10] to include the merger cases according to the management improvement order to a provision of Article 22－2.