부가가치세부담의 국제적 비교분석

The purpose of this paper is to empirically analyze the burden of the value added tax(VAT) and to seek the implications by estimating the income elasticity[buoyancy] of tax revenue for major OECD countries such as Korea, Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, using annual data from 1990 to 2016 from a macroscopic viewpoint. Furthermore, the policy implications of the value added tax(VAT) were considered by performing a comparative analysis between the results of this analysis with major OECD countries. The empirical analysis method estimated the income elasticity[buoyancy] of the tax revenue under the assumption that the effect of the tax law revision was not considered. The main empirical analysis results are as follows. First, the elasticity[buoyancy] of VAT on GDP shows that the tax revenue of VAT increases as the GDP increases in all of the 10 countries. Second, in terms of the analysis after removing autocorrelation, almost every country except Japan showed similar results to those before removing autocorrelation. Currently, the value added tax rate in Korea is 10%, which is much lower than the OECD average of 19.2%. Since the financial crisis in 2008, OECD countries have been raising their income tax and VAT in order to expand the financial resources for fiscal sustainability and welfare expenditure. In particular, the fact that Japan recently raised its consumption tax to secure stable tax revenues has a significant implication. In the future, Korea is also expecting an increase in tax burdens due to job creation in addition to rising welfare expenditure caused by the country’s low birthrate and population aging. Therefore, in terms of funding for welfare expenditure and securing fiscal sustainability, it is time to positively consider raising the value added tax rate.