기업소득환류세제 도입에 따른 배당․투자․임금증가에 관한 연구

Abstract

The Government introduced a new policy so called “Retained Earning Tax” to circulate accumulated retained earning from coporation to household. Retained Earning Tax policy is a system which impose additional income tax to large-company group or a corporation with an equity over 50 billion won if they do not spend certain portion of the current earning as in dividend, investment or wage increasing. Before the introduction, retained earning tax was severely conflicted in politic and business area, although, it was passed by National Assembly, and implemented in tax year 2015. There have been many researches which analyzed the expected effects of the tax policy or predicted stock price change before introduction. But this study empirically analyzed the effect of the tax policy on the subjected corporate's dividend payout, investment expenditure and wage increasing based on financial statements published 2015 and 2016 in which the tax system was enforced. As a result of t-test comparing the average of dividend payout, investment expenditure and wage increasing, the tax-applied corporates show higher dividend payout, lower investment expenditure and higher wage increasing before introducing the taxation. This results were the same even after the taxation implementation, and the averages of each variable change before and after the tax introduction did not show significant difference. And we counducted regression analysis model by controlling firm characteristic factor such as financial variables and corporate governance variables, the tax policy application did not have a significant effect on dividend payout, investment expenditure and wage increasting. Dividend payout has a positive relationship with the largest shareholder's holding ratio, but doesn't significant relationship with the increment of dividend payment. It suggests that the increase of the dividend payout in 2015 tax year is not intended to transfer the income of the corporate to the owner in order to avoid additional tax payment. Moreover, investment expenditure is higher in high growth potential companies and wage increasing has positive relationship with stability of financial statement and ability to pay rather than the taxation application. In short, This results suggest that the expected effect on retained earning taxation has not been satisfied enough. Since this study analysis by classifying companies subject to the taxation based on financial statement announced in 2015 and 2016, There are significant implications on the effect of the taxation application.