|
Kang Man-soo, the manager of the economic affairs team in the presidential Transition Committee, said at a briefing by the National Tax Service that it has a reputation for giving honest businesses a tougher time when it comes to tax probes. Kang said honest businesses say they have a hard time because tax authorities won¡¯t stop probing them until a minor discrepancy is discovered. Business owners say prosecutors investigate when a crime has been committed, but tax authorities investigate even when no crime has been committed. This has made tax authorities the most feared government officials among business owners. Those are some of the things small business owners told president-elect Lee Myung-bak at a meeting on Jan. 3.
It is common knowledge that tax officials get irritated and give companies a harder time when they discover no problems during audits. As a result, clever business owners purposefully put in a few small irregularities in their tax records so that tax officials can go back to their offices with some results and boost their performance records. The original purpose of tax audits -- to prevent tax evasion -- deteriorated a long time ago, turning into a means for tax officials to boost their performance records by forcing tax payments and turning people into criminals.
The NTS refunded W156.7 billion (US$1=W939) in taxes in 2003 after losing lawsuits filed by taxpayers. That amount fell to W105 billion in 2004, but rose to W853.1 billion in 2005 and to W508.3 billion in 2006. It is simply shocking to see that the amount of taxes the NTS refunded has risen between three to five times over the previous year. This shows just how aggressive tax officials have been in auditing taxpayers. But despite the rising incidents of wrongfully collected taxes, not a single NTS official has been held responsible. For the businesses tied up in lengthy trials that may last anywhere from two to three years, the experience must have been mortifying.
Moreover, the NTS has served as the ¡°sword¡± of the administration, auditing businesses using their relative scales whenever they are ordered to do so by the ruling powers. Previous administrations used the powers of the NTS to take revenge on businesses that got on their bad side, while using the tax agency to collect political funds.
During the Roh Moo-hyun administration, the NTS played its part in pressuring and harassing news organizations that were critical of the government. The former NTS chief, who has been arrested and is being tried in court for taking bribes from regional tax office chiefs, hurled insults at a particular newspaper during meetings with regional tax chiefs and other officials at a time when the NTS was probing specific news organizations for tax irregularities at the orders of the president. In other words, the ex-NTS chief was unofficially telling his subordinates to pressure and harass those news organizations. This shows that the NTS had degenerated into a weapon of the state aimed at the public.
|
