상속세 및 증여세법상 증여세제의 개선방안 - 한국과 미국의 자산이전제도의 비교법적 검토를 중심으로 -

In the Korean Inheritance and Gift Tax Act, the taxation of unrealized gains has long been contested in terms of its constitutional legitimacy, situated between the goals of securing tax revenue, protecting property rights, and realizing the social-state principle. This article examines how the gift tax regimes of the United States and Korea have developed on the basis of fundamentally different normative choices, and compares their structural features along with their constitutional implications. The United States imposes gift tax liability on the donor and institutionally accommodates intergenerational wealth transfers through various exclusion and deduction mechanisms, including the basic exclusion amount, annual exclusion, GST exemption, unlimited marital deduction, and the step-up in basis at death. By contrast, Korea imposes tax liability on the donee and adjusts tax equity primarily through relationship-based and time-based differential deductions. These structural divergences call for a reconsideration of how each legal system conceptualizes wealth transfers as legal and economic facts, and how the design of particular tax items may affect taxpayers in substantive terms. Building on this comparative analysis, this article proposes four reform directions for the Korean system. First, taking as a premise the limitations of the current tax structure that captures unrealized gains at the time of gift, it argues for a structural shift toward a dual-track model: taxing the transfer act itself at the time of gift and subsequently recapturing realized gains at the time of disposition through capital gains taxation under the Income Tax Act. Second, it proposes improvements to asset valuation methods so that the intent and economic judgment of both the donor and the donee may be more reasonably reflected. Furthermore, acknowledging the practical difficulty of a comprehensive overhaul of the existing inheritance and gift tax regime, the article advances a perspective of phased and incremental reform prior to full institutional transition. From this standpoint, it presents, third, a draft amendment to Article 53 of the Inheritance and Gift Tax Act introducing an annual gift deduction within the scope of family members defined under Article 779 of the Civil Act, and, fourth, a draft amendment to the sanction structure under Article 60(5) of the Inheritance and Gift Tax Act, designed to preserve appraisal institutions’ capacity to approach substantive fair market value while preventing an excessive bias toward sanction-avoidant valuation practices.