National Tax Tribunal: Wrongful Government Taxation Cases At All Time High

It was revealed that the rate of rulings by the National Tax Tribunal (NTT) in which “since the National Tax Service (NTS) falsely imposed taxes on the people, NTS must give back money to taxpayers” has increased. In particular, the rate of this type of ruling (based on the amount of money) by the NTT hit an all-time high of 50.3 percent in the first half of this year. Accordingly, controversy surrounding this situation is likely to arise.

According to Grand National Party lawmaker Lee Han-koo, who belongs to the Finance and Economy Committee of the National Assembly and who analyzed a paper titled “The Situation of Dealing with Claims for National Tax Judgments by the NTT,” on August 17, the average rate of rulings by the NTT reached 37.3 percent for the past three years under the Roh Moo-hyun administration. This figure is higher by more than 10 percent than the average rate of 27 percent over five years under the Kim Dae-jung administration.

Even on a case-by-case basis, the rate of rulings (37.5 percent) for the last three years was greater by 5.7 percent than that of the Kim Dae-jung administration.

On a specific tax items basis, corporate taxes took the lion’s share, standing at 44.8 percent on the basis of the amount of money and the number of cases.

Rep. Lee argued, “The fact that the participatory government has squeezed companies by indiscriminately levying taxes on them turned out to be true,” adding, “These results show that the slogan of revitalization of the economy that the government has so far boasted of is a falsehood.”

Jung-Eun Lee lightee@donga.com