참여정부 지방재정세제 개혁의 평가와 과제

Abstract

Since the establishment of the Participatory Government, the Presidential Committee on Government Innovation and Decentralization has been established and various reform assignments for decentralization issues have been pursued by the Committee. In this paper, the government's decentralization plans on local public finance and tax system are critically evaluated and some suggestions are made for further development. Japan's local public finance reform is also examined because already the Japanese government has been pursuing the reform assignments for several years and its local public finance system is very similar to the one in Korea. Although we have a flexible tax rate system for many local taxes, it has rarely been utilized because of political reasons and lack of incentives for the local governments. In addition, it seems that such issues as earmarked taxes and tax exemption leave something to be desired in the government's reform process. The Decentralization Share Tax will be included in the Local Share Tax from the year 2005 to 2009. Since it replaces some of the National Subsidy, it conflicts with the aim of the Local Share Tax itself and there will be many difficulties concerning its distribution among local governments. Many other aspects of the government's reform on local public finance have also been critically evaluated in this paper. The newly introduced systems such as the Balanced National Development Special Account and Overall Real Estate Tax and so on should be deliberately put into operation and improved constantly to perform as better systems.