地方財政擴充과 財政不均衡 解消方案에 관한 硏究

Abstract

The local autonomy system in Korea has revived in the late of 1980s' with the hope of democratizing since 30 years ago. Special metropolitan city, metropolitan city, and province has authorized as wide-area units of local government, and city, county, and autonomous district as basic units in May 1, 1988 by amendment of related laws. The local council has organized in 1988, and later the chief of the local government has been elected through a direct election in July 1, 1995. Thus institutional autonomy seems to be operated substantially. In 21th knowledge-information society, the local government must be able to accomodate the needs of its residents sufficently, and to solve local problems for itself. But it is not so in reality. Three major basic elements in the local autonomy is said to be the right of independent legislation, independent organization, and independent finance. Among these elements, the right of independent legislation and organization seem to be established to some degree, but the right of independent finance has been suffering from high financial dependence on upper governments and great financial differentials between local governments, etc. Moreover, since democratic local autonomy has revived, financial demand have sharply increased due to increased needs for social welfare and increased cost requirements for the well-balanced development among local governments, etc. However, tax system has not been reformed adequately, so financial differentials and lack of financial resources have been getting worse. Thus the plan to solve the problems is needed urgently. After comprehensive study and analysis on the current conditions and problems of the local finance, I propose the following policies as reasonable solutions for expanding the local financial capacity and decreasing the financial differentials. First, the local income tax system should be introduced for securing the stable sources of tax revenue and expanding the financial capacity. The reason is that the real estate acquisition tax, registration tax, etc., which currently occupy high percentage of local taxes, are insecure in providing stable sources of taxation because they tend to fluctuate sensitively to economic changes. Second, some local consumption taxes should be transferred to national taxes, and some national taxes with local characteristics to local taxes for expanding the local financial capacity. The tax for horse racing or a pari-mutuel ticket should be transferred to a national tax because its sources are unevenly distributed in location. But the transportation tax should be transferred to a local tax since the local government is responsible for the expansion and maintenance of most transportation facilities. And telephone tax, value added taxes on the restaurant, accomodation, merrymaking place, etc. should be transferred to a local tax since their sources are evenly distributed. Third, the tax items should be recatagorized between nation and local as well as between wide-area unit and basic unit. And financial assistance system should be reformed for solving the financial differentials. The ratio of tax revenue between national tax and local tax in Korea is about 80.3% to 19.7%, which is considerably lower than foreign countries. And the ratio of the local tax revenue between Seoul metropolitan government and its autonomous districts is about 85.8% to 14.2%, which presents some serious financial differentials. Especially, it is much more serious among autonomous districts. To solve these problems, it is recommended that some local tax items should be changed and modified properly and that the financial assistance system for decreasing financial differentials should be improved reasonably.