3,081 People Earned over 500 Million Won

The income gap is widening as the number of high-income individuals earning more than 500 million won a year and of low-income people earning less than 10 million won is increasing at the same time.

According to the National Tax Service, the number of taxpayers whose global income tax base for 2002 exceeded 500 million won was 3,081, up 22.7 percent from the previous year. The tax base, or taxable income, means gross income minus deductions.

Those in the high-income bracket earned a total of 4.96359 trillion won in 2002, a 28.2 percent increase from 2001. Their income tax also rose 15.8 percent to 1.400538 trillion won.

The number of people with a tax base of 10 million won or less grew 9.9 percent to 1.195334 million.

Taxpayers who reported their global income tax in 2003 totaled 1.841553 million, up 10 percent from 2002.

Those with the tax base of between 300 million and 500 million won, and of more than 500 million won showed relatively high growth rate of 22.4 percent and 22.7 percent respectively. People who earned more than 40 million won in interests and dividends a year numbered 35,331 with a total income of 3.642331 trillion won. Under the global income taxation, interests and dividends, real estate rental income, business income, wages and salaries, and other income are aggregated and taxed. The aggregated income is reported in May of the following year.

Ji-Wan Cha cha@donga.com