종합부동산세 개편방안에 대한 소고

This paper examines the problems of Comprehensive Real Estate Holding Tax(CREHT) through an overview of process of the introduction and changes of CREHT. First, the one of the main purposes of the introduction of CREHT, enhancing vertical equity of tax, had been significantly weakened by the changes of tax rules in 2008 under the government’s policies of deregulation and tax cut. These include aggregation, thresholds, tax base calculation, rates, tax brackets, and tax relief. Second, CREHT also has a structural problem of unbalanced benefit to non-residential property which is significantly worsening horizontal equity. Building part of non-residential property is exempt from CREHT, land part of non-residential property is separately calculated, threshold of non-residential property is 10 times higher than those of other types of property, and tax rate is a third of those of other types of property. Third, CREHT is used as a general revenue which is inappropriate to justify its taxation. This paper suggests to enhance vertical equity by restoring original aggregation method, tax base calculation, and tax rates, enhance vertical and horizontal equity by reducing favourable rules on non-residential property which enables buliding owners to be exempted, and change CREHT to hypothecated tax by clarifying the use of the revenue to provide more social housing and support tenants to alleviate the problems of shortage and increasing price of land and housing.