The Rate Schedule of Income Tax and Vertical Equity (Written in Korean)

• Main Author: 노, 기성
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Korea Development Institute 1991-12-01
• Series: KDI Journal of Economic Policy
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.23895/kdijep.1991.13.4.59

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the rate schedule of the Korean income tax system embodies the theoretically desirable distribution of the tax burden by income classes. The paper follows the approach of Young (1990) who has estimated the utility function and calculated the magnitude of sacrifice, i.e., the tax burden. The main point of the study is to estimate the utility function. The estimation results may differ if different data sets are used. Therefore, this paper employs the effective as well as the nominal tax rate schedule. The findings derived in this paper are 1) that the effective rate schedule is more appropriate in estimating the utility function; 2) that the middle class has born the relatively heavier burden over time; 3) that the current income tax credit scheme curtails the tax burden on the middle class while intensifying the tax burden of the lower and upper income classes; 4) that reducing the amount of deduction moves the distribution of tax burdens by income classes closer to the theoretically desirable model; 5) that the rate schedule of the Korean income tax system, particularly in 1991, did not conform to the desired model as did the tax systems of developed countries such as the United States, Italy, Japan, and Germany.