공정거래법상 과징금의 실제부과율 추정 및 국제비교: 부당공동행위를 중심으로
) Estimation of the Actual Levy Rates of the Administrative Surcharges Imposed for Violations of the Korean Fair Trade Act and Their International Comparison: With Focus on Cartels
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공정거래법상 과징금의 부과건수, 액수, 및 불복소송이 급증하면서 제재실효성 확보를 위해 법위반행위에 대한 과징금 최고 부과한도를 2배 인상하려는 법률개정안이 국회에서 발의되는 등 과징금제도 전반에 관한 논의가 활발하다. 본고의 목적은 공정거래법상 부당공동행위를 중심으로 다양한 과징금부과율들(기본부과율 및 실제부과율)을 2005년부터 2015년까지의 공정위 심결자료 전부를 수집하여 추정하는데 있다. 나아가 실증분석의 결과를 주요 다른 국가들과 비교해봄으로써 향후 과징금의 최적수준을 모색하는데 일조하고자 한다. 총 337건의 부당공동행위 사건자료를 활용한 분석을 통해 크게 세 가지 실증적 발견을 하였다. 첫째, 국내 실제부과율의 평균은 2.5%로서 OECD, EU, 미국의 약 16%와 비교하면 약 1/6에 그친다. 세계 전체의 평균과 비교하면 1/8로 더욱 감소한다는 진단도 내리게 하는 방대한 국제연구 또한 최근 수행된 바 있다. 둘째, 과징금 산정의 출발점이 되는 기본부과율마저도 평균 6.5%로서 상기 실제부과율 16%의 채 절반을 넘지 못하고 있다. 마지막으로 기본부과율의 국내 법정 최대값 10%는 주요 선진국들 법정부과율의 1/3~1/2 수준에 불과하다. 따라서 부당공동행위를 억제하는 실제 법집행 과정에서 어떤 이유에서든 주요 선진국들에 비하여 국내에서 상대적으로 큰 폭의 관대함을 보였다는 가설을 기각하기 힘들어 보인다.
Abstract
The use of administrative surcharges, which are imposed upon regulatory violations of the Korean Fair Trade Act, is rapidly increasing both in the frequency and the per-case amount. Related legal disputes are also increasingly brought to the appeal court by the regulatory violators with the defense that the surcharges have been excessively imposed by the Korea Fair Trade Commission. In contrast, the National Assembly and the Korea Fair Trade Commission are in the process of changing relevant stipulations to raise the overall level of the administrative surcharges, considering that the previous level fell short of fulfilling the role of containing antitrust activities and unfair practices by firms and business associations. The purpose of this paper, given the aforementioned seemingly conflicting situations, is to estimate the ‘actual levy rates’ and ‘basic levy rates’ of the surcharges imposed by the Korea Fair Trade Commission to the violators of regulations against the improper concerted practices (or cartels). Even if the ‘legal levy rates’, which are applied to the so-called affected commerce, are stipulated in the Korean Fair Trade Act across different violations. However, the legal levy rates are the maximum penalties rates that could be imposed and the actual levy rates, along with the basic levy rates, are what govern the potential offenders in reality. While they are known to be lower than the legal levy rates, their precise scales are yet to be investigated. Another purpose is to compare the estimations results with the most prevailing international counterparts that have been imposed in OECD, EU, the United States, etc., in order to help find proper rates closer to the socially optimal levels. For these purposes, we collected all surcharge cases decided by the Fair Trade Commission from 2005 to 2015, and constructed a comprehensive dataset after undertaking required adjustment for more accurate analyses, such as replacing an initial amount initially imposed in a case by its finally decided amount if the Commission reexamined the case followed by an appeal at the court. In particular, we focused on the cartel cases as the per-case surcharge amounts have been overwhelmingly large for violations of the cartel regulation in the Korean Fair Trade Act. The number of relevant cases was also ranked second among the eleven broad categories of prohibited practices in the Act. Based on the more accurately constructed dataset of 337 cartel cases in total, we were able to provide very meaningful findings. First, the average of the actual levy rates were estimated to be only 2.5%, which fall short of the one-sixth of the averages of OECD, EU, and the United States (i.e., approximately 16%). In fact, the Korean average reduces further to the one-eighth of the entire world average, which was derived from a recent study that utilized a significantly large database. Second, while the actual levy rate is decided after three more adjustment stages followed by the basic levy rate imposed at the outset for each case, the average of the basic levy rates was estimated to be also very low only at 6.5% over the whole sampling period. Thus, the basic levy rate in Korea is lower than half of even the actual levy rate of the aforementioned major countries. Third, the legal levy rate stipulated in the Act, 10%, is also lower than that in other countries. More specifically, the legal levy rate ranges from one-third to half of the legal standards used in the major countries. In other words, the basic levy rate (6.5%) in Korea, which is slightly over the legal maximum that is already fairly low compared to other countries, has further reduced enormously over the three adjustment stages to only 2.5% after all. Therefore, we cannot reject the hypothesis that a great deal of generosity has been exercised by the Korea Fair Trade Commission, regardless of legal or other causes behind such exercises.
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