The local finance of Korea has several problems caused by the unreasonable structure characters in many aspects. In particular as local autonomy has not been still put into operation, local finance system could not be reasonably developed. In the ligh...
The local finance of Korea has several problems caused by the unreasonable structure characters in many aspects. In particular as local autonomy has not been still put into operation, local finance system could not be reasonably developed. In the light of the above-mentioned situation, the purposes of this study are to establish plans for securing the financial resources of the local government by examining an annual revenue structure, to expound the problems of the local finance and to lead to the autonomous local administration.
In response to the above purposes, the author conducted a positive research one city and four kuns (county) chosen for the research (Cheon-an city, Boryung, Hong-Sung, Non-San, Seo-San Kun (county). Their annual revenues are compared and analysed.
II. Theoretical Background
The significance of the local finance, the relation between the local finance and the national finance, the structure of the local finance and the scale of the local finance are considered here.
III. The Practices of the Annual Revenue Structure in Basic Local Government.
Especially, the financial support is needed so that the local government may make firm the foundation of the local autonomy and effectively cope with the ever-increasing administrative demands.
Accordingly, the local government holds the positive and authority as the main body of economy which enables it to supply the resources and services needed to do its works.
The local finance means just these synthetic activities of the local government as the main body of economy.
By the way, the present finance of the basic local government, in a structural sense, has several points of weakness, such as the condition of insignificance of the financial scale, the regional divergence of the tax resources, the lack of autonomy and the weakness of self-reliant financial resources etc..
Additionally, it is impossible that the local government fills up the administrative demands with only its resources, bec because the supply of financial resources and not come up with the financial demands owing to the expansion and pluralizing tendancy of its function.
As the result of it, it has become inevitable that the local government should depend on the central government to fill up the lack of financial resources and the autonomy of the local government be seriously weakened.
Under this present condition, the local government can not carry out its works coinciding with regional conditions for the enhancement of the life-level of inhabitants and the increase of their welfare, but only manage to do its works uniformly under directions of the central government.
IV. The Problems and the Methods of Improvement.
1. The financial distributions attached too much importance to the national finance result in many problems, such as 1) the structural weakness of local finance, 2) the rigidity of local finance, 3) the poorness of self-income of the local government and the lack of the financial base to carry out carry out positively the active and creative autonomous administration.
2. Therefore, the following methods of improvement can be considered in order to solve the above described problems and to distribute the financial resources reasonably.
1) The work distribution must clearly be prescribed. 2) The classification of the financial expenditure must accurately be made. 3) The tax resources must reasonably be readjust. 4) The national subsidiary fund system must rationally be distributed. 5) The difference of the financial resources among local governments must be corrected by rationally improving the problems of the local share tax system.
V. Conclusion
As we can know through the investigation of the annual revenue structure, the weakness of the local finance is not the momentary problem but the accumulative one.
It has not been corrected until now, because of the centralized and conservative thought that the local government is the subordinate sentence under the uniform control of the central government and accordingly it must play no more than parts of parts of means for the accomplishment of the national objects.
However, the local government is directly related to the welfare welfare of inhabitants and accordingly it must carry out its works in coincidence with the regional characters.
In the end, on the basis of expansion of local tax revenues, it should be run parralling with the expansion of non-tax revenues and rational administration of Local Gran Tax and Subsidy.