기본소득 재원으로서 데이터세 도입방안

Abstract

The World economy is becoming digitalized as modern society has undergone the so-called the “fourth industrial revolution”. Historically, as the economy develops, better job opportunities are brought out as well. However, the fear of this industrial revolution is that the modern economy will replace large portions of human employment due to automation and mechanization. The spread of COVID recently made people avoid contact or work online and thus it increased unemployment and worsened the economy. Meanwhile, the Korean government provided emergency disaster cash supply to all people for overcoming the COVID related economic crisis, as a result basic income is rising as a conversation topic again. The nation has obligations to improve people’s social security, social welfare, economic growth, and the distribution of proper income at the same time. Therefore, subsidizing basic income is naturally able as a necessary measure for people’s rights and interests, and economic lives. Merely, how can the government secure the source of revenue for basic income is the most fundamental issue deciding the success of basic income now. A nation usually procures necessary resources of revenue through general taxation and the government fund. The use of the government fund has merit to secure funding quickly but it increases the nation’s debt and thus, it should only be used at levels that allow the government to maintain the appropriate level of debt. On other hand, taxation imposes burden to citizens directly, and thus it should be used cautiously. This is exactly the dilemma of securing financing for basic income. If we are able to gain a toehold to secure revenue for basic income without increasing the nation’s debt or shifting burden to people, it would resolve this situation. Big Information Technology (IT) companies such as Google, Facebook in global and Kakao, Naver in domestic commerce have grown up under the digitalization of the world economy. Gigantic IT companies such as Google and Apple mainly use tax havens to avoid tax and thus many governments have been devoting all their energies to block them by introduction of digital tax system, a so called ‘Google tax’. IT conglomerates utilize artificial intelligence (AI) in their products using raw data from personal information and making profit for themselves. They have been using personal raw data at no charge and thus a measure to impose tax for cost using raw data has been proposed recently to make this data a source of funding for basic income. This ‘Data tax’ would allegedly be similar to taxes on raw materials in the manufacturing industry and it is different from other digital tax systems discussed in the world recently to impose on Global IT conglomerates. Consequently, hereinafter I checked the possibility and validity of a data tax as a solution for basic income through review legal problems. I proposed devices of data taxation by analyzing the concept of data taxes based on similar systems and methods in other countries to collect tax and distribute it as well.