법인세제 개편방향에 관한 연구

Reform of Korean Corporate Income Taxation: Using the KOCGE Model

Globalization of economic environment has accelerated the international tax competition among countries. In particular, globalization in the international capital market makes major countries lower the statutory tax rate on capital income, in order to induce capital the international financial market. Reform of the corporate income taxation is becoming one of the key subjects to raise the national competition in the international economy. In Korea, there are tax reform efforts relating to corporate income taxation to meet the international trends several times. The statutory corporate income tax rate has been lowered. The various reductions and exemptions relating to corporate income taxation have been consolidated. However, Korean corporate income tax system has been outdated, compared With fast moving international economic environment. The motivation of this study is to find out the right direction of the Korean corporate income tax reform. The discussions on Korean corporate income tax reform have been lop-sided to the qualitative analysis of tax reform appropriateness. There are not much studies explaining how corporate income tax affects the income distribution by classes and production in each industry. Using the Korea Computable General Equilibrium (KOCGE) model, we try to analyze quantitatively the effect of corporate income tax reduction on the production in 25 industries respectively and over all and on the welfare of the economy. According to the simulation results using the KOCGE model, Korean corporate income tax system should be reformed to strengthen the tax base and constitution of Korean economy. One of the way to improve the welfare and efficiency of the economy is to lower the statutory corporate income tax rate and reduce the government expenditure simultaneously, under the equal tax revenue constraints. Korean government lowered the statutory corporate income tax rate by 1%p in 2001. However, our simulation result shows that there still be a room to lower an extra 4~5% of the statutory corporate income tax rate, to improve both efficiency and income distribution.