세무조사 운용실태와 개선방안

Abstract

While tax audits are performed for the financial income of nation and the fair taxation, they cost taxpayers a great deal and tend to be abused in nature. The purpose of this study is to analyze the operating state and to suggest the reform measures for the tax audit using the national tax statistics of National Tax Service(NTS) from 2006 to 2018. The findings of this study show that most audit rates have consistently decreased because NTS keeps the number of tax audits without big changes even though total number of returns has increased steadily from 2006 to 2018. Tax audit rates on individual businesses and corporations are 0.10% and 0.94% on average, respectively. Also, there are big differences in audit rates by a size of total revenue. Tax audits on property taxes take up high proportion of all audits. Especially, the audit rate on inheritance tax is 102.38% on average and the assessed tax amount after audit comes to 25% of total inheritance revenue. In addition, the assessed tax amount after the audit on stock transfer is 22% of total gift tax revenue, which implies that many illegitimate returns are detected by tax audit. The number of requests of taxpayer advocate intervention program has increased greatly. However, the number of appeals of pre-assessment review has decreased consistently and so has the acceptance rate, too. Several reform measures for tax audit based on the findings are suggested. Suitable level of audit rates should be maintained for security of the effective national tax audit. Tax audits should be operated on a periodic audit-focused basis and excess in the audit on the property taxes should be mitigated. Due procedures for the administrative guidance which has a similar nature to the tax audit should be arranged and the release of related information should be expanded. Some invigoration plans for pre-assessment review and taxpayers advocate intervention program are needed to work them better. Statistics on the result of tax audits should be more systematized for citizens to figure out the overall state of tax audit of NTS. It is necessary to give a more detailed account on the tax audit to the investigated tax payer.