배우자상속세 폐지에 따르는 법적 쟁점에 관한 소고

Recently, the discussion on the “abolition" of spousal inheritance tax has been actively developed, but it seems that the exact meaning of “abolition" is not defined as whether it is to exclude the amount of inheritance tax from the taxable value of inheritance tax, or to exempt the spousal inheritance tax or to significantly increase the deduction. Most of the previous studies exempted the spousal inheritance tax or significantly increased the deduction, but the inheritance tax amendment bill of March 17, 2025 excludes it from the inheritance tax value. Therefore, it became necessary to conduct an overall review of the “abolition" of the spousal inheritance tax, and it was divided into its meaning and types, foreign legislative precedents, and proposed opinions on the abolition of the spouse's inheritance right. The conclusion of this paper is as follows. First, if you want to “abolish" the spousal estate tax, three method can be considered. For example you can exclude spouses' share from Estate(Method 1), or deduct the amount of spousal rights of estates in full in parallel with the estate acquisition tax (Method 2), or while adopting the Estate tax method, the deduction amount is increased inwardly like the Unified tax credit in the United States(Method 3) Second, in determining the spousal deduction, as seen in the division of property in divorce, Likewise, the duration of marriage and the contribution to property formation should be considered. Third, in the case of switching to estate acquisition tax, considering the relationship with civil law, etc., The spousal estate taxation method according to the estate tax method is the easiest to introduce. Fourth, if the spousal estate tax is abolished or the deduction amount is significantly increased, the problems such as fake divorce are expected to decrease, and It is necessary to reflect the legislative precedents of foreign countries where there is little difference that the spouse's share according to the event of divorce or event of death. Fifth, if the surviving spouse is a foreigner, because the number of marriages with foreigners is increasing. it is necessary to have a stipulation on the scope of estate tax taxation and deduction.