Taxes are the main source of a country’s national revenue. Since taxes are levied coercively, it may lead to violation of the citizens’ property rights. For the purpose of minimizing such property rights infringement, the tax remedy system were ad...
Taxes are the main source of a country’s national revenue. Since taxes are levied coercively, it may lead to violation of the citizens’ property rights. For the purpose of minimizing such property rights infringement, the tax remedy system were adopted. The National Tax Service(NTS) has run it’s own administrative remedy system which enables prompt recovery of tax payers’ such violated property rights. This remedy system provides preliminary self-adjustment opportunities to tax authority.
However the tax authority’s administrative remedy system has complex structure which consists of either the necessary flat administrative instance process or the elective three-layered administrative instance process. Therefore, reforms to make the system more reasonable are necessary to provide actual remedies that safeguard property rights.
This research examines the problems that lie in the tax remedy system’s decision process on national taxation done in each administrative instance and safeguarding the decision body’s independence. Accordingly, suggestions for reasonable improves are made. The following is a summary of the research.
The research first seeks ways to secure reasonability within each administrative instance’s decision process.
First, the taxation dispute review and consultation system should be merged into the legality review before taxation system Hearing the same taxation issues, filed by two different applicants, twice for taxation notification not only proves as an obstacle for prompt tax payer remedy but also lowers administrative productivity. Also, as the taxation dispute review and council committee does not include members outside the committee, limiting the objectivity and fairness of the consultation and rendering it difficult for the system to be actually effective.
Second, the National Tax Examination Committee should be run differently before and after taxation. When prior to taxation, the committee should, within the principle of no taxation without law, provide ample opportunities for the tax payers and tax administration to communicate and negotiate.
Third, the National Tax Examination commissioners should be allowed to read written statements concerning the tax appeal, documents showing the source of disagreement, and the petitioner’s request stating his/her reasons for petitioning.
Fourth, the National Tax Service’s request for examination system should be dismantled. Tax payers prefer to request adjudgment at the National Tax Tribunal, which has become independent from the tax levying administration, than requesting examination in the mandatory administrative appeal stage prior to filing a case. For cases that have gone through adjudgment request without an objection having been filed, taxation officers should also be given the right to file a case.
Next, the research seeks ways improvement measures safeguarding the independence of deciding bodies within each administrative instance.
First, under the National Government Organization Act, the hearings divisions belonging to the National Tax Services should become independent from the tax levying administration. The head of the hearings division should have roughly equivalent qualifications as those of the tax judges working for the National Tax Tribunal. The independence of the hearings divisions and its officers should be safeguarded.
Second, to safeguard the National Tax Tribunal’s tax judges’ and examiners’ independence, personnel exchange between the Ministry of Strategy and Finance and the National Tax Tribunal should be discontinued.
This research analyzes how the administrative remedy system for national taxation actually proceeds on the working level, thereby comprehending the reasonability of the decision process and the current state of the decision body’s independence. Suggestions for improving have been derived. These are significances of the research.
The research is limited because it fails to substantially analyze how the personnel deeply involved in the actual processing of administrative remedy system on national taxes differ in perceptions about the decision process’s reasonability or the independency of decision body.