Tax Probe Will Be Restrained Until Next Year

The tax probe on the export industry, construction business, base businesses of local economy, and productive small-medium service businesses will be postponed until the end of the first half of next year. Sohn Young-Rae, the Commissioner of National Tax Service held a meeting yesterday with the local commissioners and decided to restrain from the tax investigation that might negatively influence on the recovery of economy.

The businesses that benefit the postponement of the tax probe will include the small-medium business that exports more than 500 million dollars, the businesses whose export is over 20 percent of its total sales, construction businesses including the housing construction and the engineering works, base industry of the local economy that are under the difficulties of finance, small-medium business of waste disposal and freights, and the small-medium business of the information technology.

40-50 businesses among the total 240,000 corporate businesses over the nation will benefit the postponement of the tax investigation.

However, the National Tax Service will continue to carry out the tax investigation into the revealed tax evasion and when it is necessary to secure the tax bonds or to induce honest tax report of the corporations that have not had tax probe for a long time.

NTS also decided not to force the tax imposition even though the tax collection is difficult by the slowdown of economy.

Assistant commissioner for Planning and Management Kim Jeong-Bok, added that NTS would make a prudent decision when carrying out tax probe even into the consumer business if the tax investigation might affect to shrink the consumption.

NTS will concentrate on the settlement of the credit card use and the blockage of the outflow of the national properties to secure the national budget income, reducing the tax probe on the business that might affect to slowdown the domestic economy.

NTS will also carry out an intensive control over the unreasonable service fee of the entertainment business and the illegal transaction of the Internet settlement agencies, by closely analyzing the transaction records of Internet shopping malls. In addition, after reviewing whether the foreign companies in Korea pay unreasonably mushroomed management consultant fee to the parent company, NTS will collect the related taxes when it is necessary.

iam@donga.com