공익활동 활성화를 위한 공익법인 과세제도의 개선방안

Abstract

This paper aims to suggest improvement plans of taxation system to promote more active public interest activities of public-service corporations. For this study, the significance and the present status of public-service corporation taxation system and problems of public-service corporation taxation system were investigated and specific improvement plans were explored. Public-service corporation refers to a nonprofit corporation for public interests. Under tax law, public-service corporation has wider meanings, including those under public-service corporation legislation. In 2017, there were 34,426 public-service corporations with different business purposes in operation. These public-service corporations receive various national tax and local tax benefits and have a duty to cooperate, but there are some taxation problems as follows. The current public-service corporation taxation system ⅰ) is complicated, not an united, systematic structure focusing on public-service corporations, ⅱ) imposes heavy additional tax burden for transparency, ⅲ) does not reflect many different voices of subscribers properly, and ⅳ) does not acknowledge the rule of management rights through public-service corporations, consistently. In order to improve these problems, ⅰ) the Basic Law for National Taxes needs to clearly define public-service corporations under tax law, and differences among individual tax systems, such as the Income Tax Law, the Corporate Tax Act, the Inheritance Tax and Gift Tax Act, and the Value-Added Tax Act should be resolved separately, ⅱ) there is a need to expand the range of public-service corporations’ obligation of an external audit under Inheritance Tax and Gift Tax Act from 10 billion won or over to 12 billion won, and educational corporations and religious corporations should be included, ⅲ) it is required to acknowledge a tax deferral of transfer income taxes caused by conditional donation in order to reflect various opinions of subscribers, change gifted taxes imposed to income taxes, and change tax credit of contributions to income deduction, and ⅳ) there is a need to actively use the system to ask public-service corporations to pay some of contributed properties obligatorily for public utilities.