한국 부가가치세제의 연원(淵源) - 최초의 도입 과정에서 앨런 A. 테이트와 제임스 C. 뒤그넌의 보고서가 미친 영향을 중심으로

The Republic of Korea started considering introduction of the value-added tax in the early-1970s and the relevant law came into effect in July 1 of 1977. The International Monetary Fund greatly helped this process by dispatching two European experts, i.e. Alan A. Tait from the United Kingdom and James C. Duignan from Ireland, who closely consulted the Korean government with the project. Their respective reports to the Korean government seem to have exercised huge influence on the institutional design of VAT and the relevant decision-makings by the Korean government. However, those reports since then have long been virtually forgotten without attracting due attention or interest from the tax experts and commentators. This article is an attempt to remind us of the historical and theoretical importance of these reports by briefly reviewing their overall structure and analyzing some selected topics dealt with in these reports. As a preliminary step, this article depicts with what little information that is currently available who Alan Tait and James Duignan were. Afterwards, the focus is shifted to the reports that they submitted to the Korean government, Their composition and structure, the topics discussed and the basic and fundamental ideas and understanding that are ever present throughout the reports are identified, discussed and evaluated. Duignan’s report is by far the more extensive and voluminous one, and thus this article picks up some of the topics that were of particular interest to Duignan. They are, among others, separate registration of branches, submission of VAT invoices to the tax authorities, issuing of simplified invoices to the final consumers and lack of effective provisions requiring proper bookkeeping. By contrasting the relevant statutory provisions under the first Korean VAT Code with their corresponding provisions under the so-called Sixth Directive of the then European Economic Community (now the European Union), this article reviews and evaluates the argument that Duignan consistently raised in his report that the Korean VAT shows certain conceptual differences from its European counterparts. This article goes on to compare the same provisions of the first Korean VAT Act with its subsequent amendments, and in that course, how the Korean VAT evolved after its inception and what marks the Duignan reports left thereon. The article ends with calling for further researches on the Tait and Duignan reports, including (but of course, not limited to) the question of how the aforesaid conceptual discrepancies between Duignan and the Korean tax officials on the essential elements of VAT should play out after forty years or so, where so many have changed.