초기 중소기업의 4대 사회보험경감의 경제적 타당성 분석

Abstract

Early start-up SMEs play a pivotal role in job creation/retention, economic development, sustainable growth, and enlargement of the tax base as well as elevation of entrepreneurship in the future Korean economy where issues about soaring youth unemployment, low domestic demand levels, jobless growth and recent global fiscal crisis prevail. The current status of SMEs accounts for 99% of all businesses and 88% of all employees. Generally speaking, start-up companies are not easy to keep the stage of growth consistently due to the shortage of management resources (e.g. external financing, human resources, marketing, etc.), especially, a severe lack of operating funds for R&D, production, and marketing promotion. In the case of SMEs, it is very difficult to get money from commercial banks because of their collateral shortages, and asymmetric information between banks and start-up SMEs. As previously described SMEs' potential contribution in Korean economy and their difficulties in the business environment, there are a lot of rational reasons for supporting them. The Korean government has made an effort to assist SME start-ups by using a reduction in income tax, provision of loan guarantees, supplies of government funds, etc. for 20 years. Nonetheless, the survival rate of start-up SMEs is very low as shown by Jeon (2008) reporting a 5 year survival rate of less than 50%. This means that there is a necessity to make policies to enhance the survival rate. So this paper elucidates that a cost reduction in 4 social insurances will deal with current financial constraints early stage SMEs face and suggests appropriate rationales along with efficient measures in order to foster hidden champions to global star SMEs as the locomotive of a globalized economy for maximizing efficiency and job opportunities. The purpose of this research is to analyze the tough going concerns for early start-up SMEs and suggests the reduction of the social insurance costs within the scope of beneficiary pay principle. For this purpose, the paper investigates the survival rates, financial performances for early established SMEs and the effective tax rate with a coefficient variation from 2000 to 2008. The data were extracted from the Korean Investors Service (KIS) data base. The major differences between this study and previous literatures are represented as follows : First, we use the concept of individual based business establishments and corporate body based start-ups respectively. We define the former as the date-of-start-up, and the latter as the date-of-incorporation. This is very important for studying early start-up SMEs because of the conceptual difference between them. When the individually established business is entitled as the form of corporate body, there is no conceptual difference between the date-of-start-up and the date-of-incorporation. While there is a conceptual difference when any firm starting as an individual based business is changed into corporate body later. Therefore, unlike the previous studies, our paper applied this notion. Second, for the first time we examine the extent to which the social insurance costs burden the early set-up SMEs. This analysis is important because the economic burdens caused by insurance costs have a negative impact on financial performances as well as the survival rate of early stage SMEs. Our results are as follow : First, the 5 year survival rate of early start-ups are 59.5% (based on date-of -start-up) or 30.3% (based on date-of-incorporation) respectively. This implies that new businesses have difficult to maintain their own business during the first 5 years. Second, the burden of 4 social insurances costs is unbearable comparing to operating profit, sales, and assets. Third, early start-ups have a higher effective tax rate (ETR) and its coefficient variation (CV) of 4 social insurances harming the survival rate of new businesses. In addition, the non-manufacturing industry has higher ETR based on date-of-start-up (99.09%) and date-of-incorporation (101.41%) comparing to that of date-of-start-up (47.90%) and date-of-incorporation (31.71%) of the manufacturing industry respectively. Furthermore, the non-manufacturing industry has higher CV (24.90) comparing to that (15.33) of manufacturing industry based on date-of-incorporation even though the government channels most of their assistance into the manufacturing industry. Fourth, the survival rate of date-of-incorporation is less than that of date-of-start-up meaning that SMBA (Small and Medium Business Administration) should reconsider the standards of existent SME assistant policy related to early start-ups. According to the results of research, early start-ups have difficulty to grow to a stable level and we proved the fact by analyzing the survival rate, financial performance, horizontal equity of effective tax rate, and CV (Coefficient Variation). Until now, our government including SMBA, has implemented assistant projects such as financial aid, tax aid, etc. for SMEs for a long time. Nonetheless, in reality, early start-ups are struggling to pay 4 social insurances considering their payability, industry category, and age of firm. In order to boost the growth of SMEs by overcoming these difficulties, one of the solutions is cutting or delaying 4 social insurances during early period when the cost burden of 4 social insurances are too high to survive. In addition, we suggest 4 policy implications, such as temporary reduction, temporary delay, and policy loan for 4 social insurances so as to increase the survival rate of new businesses for maximizing economic dynamic in knowledge based economy. The first option is a temporary cost reduction of 4 social insurances which is the most preferable and directly effective to the early businesses by decreasing the fixed cost of management to enable more businesses to reach the break-even point easily, but the benefit of this policy may belong to business or business owner at the cost of 4 social insurance companies, government, and employees of an insurant. To avoid the intrinsic moral hazard problem, we have to check the related credit level or previous firm history before providing this assistance. Second, temporary delay implementation of 4 social insurances does not hurt benefit principle in the end comparing to the temporary reduction. The burden of this policy results from the interest loss for the delay period and unpaid insurance premium with its interest by the failed businesses during the delayed period. The total cost of this policy does not exceed that of temporary reduction case. Third, loans to start-ups for 4 social insurances is appropriate for the benefit principle, market economy system, and aforementioned moral hazard problem. The strong point is that this loan only helps the marginal firms that have difficulty in paying 4 social insurance expenses for the short term. Fourth, when considering government budget constraint and economic efficiency, this measure to reduce the burden of 4 social insurance costs will be pushed forward for the start-up SMEs which create job opportunities and provide competitive value-added service or industry. Moreover, to establish optimal policy for 4 social insurances, the government might benchmark the previous policies adopted in Germany, Japan, China, and the Korean special law on employment stability. The social insurance burden could be reduced on condition that 4 social insurance providers are in a financially good condition as Germany and Japan do. Other examples from Korea and China are that the burden could be flexibly adjusted to deal with existing macroeconomic stagnation during the financial crisis era at the cost of domestic fiscal deficit.