Inheritance Taxes to be levied for Single-Home Owners

A plan to gradually curtail the taxation exception system, which includes the no capital gains tax on single-family single-home owners, tax-preferred savings, and easy taxation of a value added tax, is to be initiated.

Furthermore, a plan allowing people to postpone the debt redemption date of national basic life guarantee receivers and allowing them to pay back in installments for scant proprietors will be out during this month.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and Economy Lee Hun-jai reported a “2005 Work Plan” with these subjects as the central issues to President Roh Moo-hyun at Cheong Wa Dae yesterday.

The MOFE decided to plan methods to stabilize possession taxes to keep a stable basis underneath the real estate market, to introduce a real estate market price report system, and to activate lease housing by June.

Deputy Prime Minister Lee also announced in the report, “While promoting five billion dollars in investment inside the economic free trade area, we will promote one or two foreign schools and hospitals each.”

According to the MOFE, MOUs (Memorandum of Understanding) were signed with U.K. AMEC for international work area development (two billion dollars) at north of Incheon Airport, and with U.S. Fine for new port development in Songdo (15 billion dollars).

To improve the government-owned property management system to the public level, the MOFE researches all the state-owned hybrid land of 700,000 sites, and will complete a quarter of it this year. Furthermore, the MOFE decided to publicly recruit a manager who will actually manage state-owned property.

Moreover, regarding the abolition of no capital gains taxes for one-family one-house owners, it said, “During the first half of the year, we will provide a detailed schedule about when it will be abolished.”

After receiving the report, President Roh said, “Middle-sized lease houses should be dealt with by the market, and poorer leased houses, which cannot be solved by the market, should be handled by the public sector.”

Jong sik Kong Chi-Young Shin kong@donga.com higgledy@donga.com