Tax Investigation on the 1200 Businessmen Who Hated Accepting Credit Cards

1200 persons including doctors, lawyers and educational institute businessmen, who are unwilling to accept credit card, will be made a tax investigation during March to June.

National Tax Service held the meeting of nation-wide tax office chiefs on the 18th, and announced `plan to investigate vulnerable fields for using credit cards` as above.

NTS decided the scope of investigation object to 35,854 businessmen who earn over 24 million won yearly in the 9 fields, which are reluctant to accept credit card like △ cosmetic surgery, △ dental clinic specialized for orthodontia, △ ophthalmic hospital for lasik operation, △ herbal clinic for invigorant, △ dermatological and urology clinic, △ law firm, △ educational institute, △ grand sports center, and △beauty center for skin and obesity.

NTS plans to select 3,600 persons, who are suspected for tax dodging, for intensive supervision, and begin to investigate 1,200 persons concentrated among them. It will provide the rest 2,400 persons with a chance to save them by writing them their suspicion.

NTS is likely to begin second round tax investigation in the second half of this year(July – December) adding 5 fields to the object such as △ pharmacy, △ jewelry shop, △ buffet restaurant, △ wedding hall affiliated restaurant, and △ inn and motel.

The ratio of sales by credit card to total sales of ordinary businessmen is rapidly increasing since 1999, but that of service business like educational institute and lawyer is staying at 10 percent or so in 2000. Successive complaints about the unwillingness of accepting credit card and charging fee in the 14 business fields are rushing to NTS.

And it will intensify the measure to find out the shops disguising credit card membership and defrauding the revenue.

Kim Mun-Hwan chief of investigation division II in NTS said, "we are closely examining 1 million and 250,000 detailed accounts issued by the 3,890 shops disguising credit card membership, for which credit card companies provided information. We will investigate the businessmen who dealt with the fraud shop frequently and for great amount of money."

He added, "we will increase the frequency of investigation to once a month from once a year in order to find out actual businessmen who makes use of the fraud shops, and introduce proper compensation for the credit card users who identify the actual owner of the shop." NTS is operating the system that informs the fraud shops to credit card companies as soon as it finds out them so that credit card companies could refuse to approve and pay for the dealings.

iam@donga.com