지방세 세목교환의 타당성 검토

An Evaluation of Proposal for Exchange of Local Taxes in Seoul under Horizontal Fiscal Gap

A proposal by political majority party is to rearrange current local taxes among Seoul government and provincial governments for reducing the horizontal fiscal gap among provincial governments. It emphasizes their equity aspects and disregards the intergovernmental fiscal transfer. The theory in local public finance tells us that property tax is ideal base for provincial government, due to its immobile characteristics. Thus a proposal for exchange of property and tobacco tax is against theoretical argument. We suggest several proposals to reduce the horizontal fiscal gap, however, in the line with theoretical justification. One is that property tax by corporatioin is moved into Seoul government, and automobile tax moved into provincial government.