The Highest Allotment, Tax, Annuity and Premium

Last year Korean people are reported to have 26.4 percent of a share in various kinds of tax, health insurance, and national annuity as the funds for social welfare increased by a large margin. The percentage is the highest number in four years in a low since 1997.

According to the report called `the result of peoples` share and its budget`, submitted by the Ministry of Finance and Economy to OECD, last year, Korean people`s share reached 136.trillion 355.3billion won, which takes 26.4 percent of GDP.

Peoples` share went up every year since the current government had started in 1997, 22.7 percent in 1997, 22.9 percent in 98, 23.6 percent in 1999, and 26.4 percent in 2000. Every year the percentage was the highest in the history, and especially last year`s peoples` share increased as much as 23tillion. This is a very heavy burden on people`s shoulder.

People`s share is a total of various tax, annuity, and premium, and if the number goes up then it means that people paid much tax and annuity.

Last year, tax (an income tax, the corporation tax, a transfer income tax, and a local tax etc.) was 113 trillion and 535.3 billion won: premium (health insurance, accident at work insurance) and various annuity (a national annuity, a civil servant annuity) were 22 trillion and 820 billion won.

According to an analysis, the reason for the increase was that government made more social welfare plan in the process of overcoming the foreign currency exchange crisis.

An official of the Ministry of Finance and Economy says, ``But Korea ranks quite low after Mexico among OECD countries. And the percentage will go down to 26.1 percent in 2001.``

Despite the above response from the Ministry, professionals foresaw that the number would not fall down for a while because of a wrong and weak social welfare policy.

The number is the total social welfare funds divided by the GDP.

yhchoi65@donga.com