우리나라 보험차익 과세의 문제점과 해결방안 연구―2013년 2월 15일 개정 소득세법 시행령을 중심으로―

Abstract

The Amendment of Article 25 of the Presidential Decree of the Personal Income Tax Law related to savings-type net insurance proceed has a great significance in that it became the institutional foundation to enable to limit the tax exemption on saving-type insurance whenever necessary with the intent of preventing tax avoidance via insurance plan. Therefore, the amendment contributed to the taxation systems in terms of enhancement of tax fairness compared to other financial industries, financial instruments benefited from other tax incentives and other financial instruments. In addition, the revised provision is expected to prevent high net-worth taxpayers from avoiding the comprehensive tax regime. However, the regulation has been amended without comprehensive conside- ration for flexibility as well as diversity of insurance contract, insurance industry practice and other regulations such as Insurance Business Act, although the insurance taxation system does not exist independently and is even more complicated compared to other tax area. In addition, current tax laws related to insurance are relatively simple and abstract. Furthermore, interpretations are too unclear to apply to various practical cases, even the tax authorities' interpretations lack. Therefore, the regulation still has problems even after the amendment. This study identifies problems of current taxation on net insurance proceeds focusing income tax and gift tax regarding the amended provision. Then suggestions for improvement on the problems presented in this paper can be summarized as follows. To begin with, various types of insurance products have been developed, as a boundary of insurance plan is broken. Therefore, the tax and customs office of the Korean Ministry of Strategy and Finance (the “MOSF") stretches the meaning of savings-type insurance plan at the discretion of tax authorities, regardless of classification of insurance products in Insurance Business Act. However, the tax exemption for traditional insurance, considering a social function and a positive impact, should be maintained regardless of preservation term, remaining the original intent of taxing net proceeds on saving-type insurance. In that, tax exemption should be treated differently based on the characteristic of insurance plans. In this perspective, the concept of saving-type insurance should be specified in the law in order to clarify the scope of insurance to be subject to tax. Also, this study suggested that the concept match with the Insurance Business Law. It needs to support the traditional insurance product by governments. Secondly, this study suggested that the regulation should set the limit for tax-exempted proceeds based on the ultimate beneficiaries who are taxpayer, in order to resolve the problem of unfairness for the similar cases, and prevent tax avoidance. While maintaining the tax-free limit in consideration of that private insurances are able to make up for lack of public social security, the suggestion can be a proper method to prevent from utilizing insurance products insurance. Also, it would be helpful to eliminate the complexity of the law application and reduce tax compliance cost.