국세데이터를 활용한 증여세 과세체계 개편 효과 실증연구

초록

Despite rising asset prices and inflation increasing nominal asset values, the current deduction limits and tax bracket thresholds for inheritance and gift tax remain fixed. Amid concerns over bracket creep—where increases in nominal value translate into real increases in tax burden—this study uses gift tax microdata from the National Tax Statistics Center of the National Tax Service, covering 2016 to 2023, to empirically analyze whether inflation affects the gift tax burden, and simulates changes in tax burden under reform scenarios discussed in prior research in order to derive policy implications. A regression analysis was conducted to examine whether inflation affects the effective gift tax rate, along with a scenario analysis to assess the effects of adjusting deduction limits and tax bracket thresholds. Five scenarios were constructed: full tax exemption for spousal gifts (Scenario 1), deduction adjustment reflecting inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index (Scenario 2), and application of the U.S. (Scenario 3), German (Scenario 4), and Japanese (Scenario 5) systems. The regression results confirmed a positive relationship between inflation and gift tax burden. In the scenario analysis, fully exempting spousal gifts from taxation (Scenario 1) removed approximately 2% of annual filings from gift tax liability each year, and for higher tax brackets, the exemption produced a concentrated, large-scale reduction in computed tax due to the characteristic prevalence of high-value asset transfers in that segment. The scenario incorporating inflation-adjusted gift deductions (Scenario 2) showed an overall easing of tax burden across all brackets, with a particularly pronounced reduction for the bracket below 300 million KRW. Finally, while the scenarios applying the U.S. (Scenario 3), German (Scenario 4), and Japanese (Scenario 5) systems revealed variations in tax burden shifts by country, they commonly showed a substantial increase in the tax burden for lower brackets compared to the current system, primarily driven by their high minimum marginal tax rates. For the upper tax brackets, the tax burden decreased under the U.S. and German systems, whereas under the Japanese system it increased across all brackets, though the magnitude of the increase tended to diminish at higher brackets. This suggests that adopting foreign systems requires comprehensive consideration of deduction methods, rate structures, and the domestic asset distribution. Unlike prior research, this study is significant in that it expands gift tax research into empirical analysis using gift tax return microdata. It also quantitatively analyzes the effects of five tax reform scenarios, confirming the patterns of tax burden change by bracket that could arise from spousal gift tax exemption, inflation-indexing of gift deductions, and application of major countries' tax systems. In particular, the study confirms that simply applying foreign tax systems to the domestic system could relatively increase the tax burden in lower brackets, thereby offering policy implications by highlighting the need for system design that takes into account domestic asset distribution and recipient characteristics in future gift tax reform.

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