地方交付稅 및 國庫補助金制度의 實態와 財政的公平

The Operation of Government Grants System and the lnterprovincial Fiscal Equity

The relative financial positions of local governments are affected favorably or adversely by the national. government policies exercised over local governments, although local governments are self-financing and economically independent units provided by the statutes. It is not only division of governmental functions and taxing power between national government and local governments, but also the grants and the debt policy of the national government that influence the level of revenues and expenditures of local governments. Under the present financial system, the principal sources of local government revenues are the local taxes. Most of local governments, however, cannot derive sufficient revenues from such sources to meet their financial needs. Further, the difference of interprovincial tax burdens and the quantity of public services provided per resident owing to undue division of taxing power, lack of correlation between expenditures and revenues and unequal revenue sources at the same level of local governments make the problem more complicated. It is, therefore, not surprising that the relative importance of government grants in the revenue structure of local governments has grown recently in Korea, too. Such a fact accounts in considerable measure for the development of grants system in order to improve the insufficient aspects of performance of the local tax system and to bring the level of public services of local governments up to a minimum standard. Accordingly, it is logical to observe the interprovincial fiscal equity in order to examine the way and direction of grants distribution among provinces as well as local tax burdens. I. Operation of the Equalization Grant and the Conditional Grants In the fiscal year 1963, the various local governments received government grants, a total sum of 15 billion won, or 50 per cent of the total net revenue; approximately 6 billion won was paid to assist the general administration, of which 2 billion won was the equalization grants and 4 billion won was the conditional grants, and 9 billion won, for education grants. The equalization grant, which accounted for 30.9 per cent of a total net revenue raised in the sector of general administration of local governments in 1963, consists of the normal block grant and the special grant in Korea. In 1963, the normal block grants amounted to 2 billion won and the special grants, 132 million won. The former is apportioned to various level of local governments for each year in proportion to the amount of financial deficit calculated on the basis of estimated financial needs and estimated local tax revenues. The latter, however, is paid to local governments to meet the financial requirements due to casualty and so on. In 1963, the sources of fund of equalization block grant was fixed on the several national tax revenues; 40 per cent of the business tax revenue, the admission tax revenue and the electricity and gas tax revenue, respectively, and 85 per cent of unfiltered and filtered wines tax revenues. On the other hand the maximum amount of the special grant was fixed on 10 per cent of the normal grants financed by the revenues of the business tax, admission tax and the electricityand gas tax. The grants for the special services(the conditional grants) totalled 13 billion won in 1963; of which education grants accounted for 9 billion won. Thus the relative importance of conditional grants in the net revenue of local governments (except education sector) came up to 10.4 per cent and that of education grants in the net revenue of the education sector reached 81.2 per cent, respectively. The breakdown of the conditional grants by sections is shown in more detail as follows: The conditional grants paid to local governments for general services amounted approximately 4 billion won in 1963. They were based broadly upon the acceptance of the fact that many of the services supplied by local governments were national in charact