베트남 외국인계약자세 납부기업의 이중과세방지에 관한 연구

Abstract

Vietnam is a country in which many Korean companies invested after China and the United States. The Ministry of Finance of Vietnam is actively expanding tax revenues to secure financial resources for economic development. When a foreigner or foreign corporation provides services to a Vietnamese corporation or individual under a contract, or by consent or commitment, the foreign contractor withholding tax (“FCWT”) must be withheld and paid regardless of whether or not the foreign contractor has a permanent establishment or is a resident in Vietnam, and are to be paid as value-added tax, corporate income tax, or personal income tax. However, since the Korean tax authorities did not allow foreign tax credits on the corporate income tax or individual income tax paid with respect to FCWT until recently, companies operating businesses in Vietnam were burdened with double taxation. Accordingly, in this paper, we outlined the FCWT, and examined the position of the Korean tax authorities on foreign tax credits of FCWT and how to prevent double taxation of FCWT paying companies. If foreign source income is subject to foreign tax credit, amount attributable to the fixed amount of the foreign source is received pursuant to the analysis by the Ministry of Strategy and Finance in February 2018. However, companies that do not have a permanent establishment in Vietnam or companies that have a permanent establishment in Vietnam are still burdened with double taxation if their foreign source income is underestimated. In order to minimize double taxation of companies paying FCWT, the tax authorities should first interpret the term permanent establishment in a broader sense within the scope of Article 5 of the Korea-Vietnam tax treaty. Second, when calculating the amount of foreign source income for the calculation of the foreign tax credit limit for FCWT paying companies with a permanent establishment in Vietnam, the tax authorities should not calculate the amount of income as being equivalent to the activities of the permanent establishment, but rather paragraph 2 of Article 94 of the Enforcement Decree of the Corporate Tax Act. Finally, the competent authorities in Korea should promote mutual agreement procedures to resolve double taxation of companies that have paid FCWT in Vietnam through close discussions with competent authorities in Vietnam. The Korean tax authorities is tasked with collecting taxes, but also with the responsibility of protecting the economic activities of taxpayers and their difficulties. Regarding the FCWT stance, we hope that the Korean tax authorities will come up with an alternative plan to relieve the double taxation burden on companies from the public's perspective.