90 Types of Quasi-Tax Burdens... 100 Trillion Collected Over the Past 5 Years

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Kwang-ho] Various types of charges, a kind of quasi-tax, have been counted to reach about 90. The amount collected by the government as charges over the past five years also amounts to 100 trillion won.

According to the recent 'Collection Status by Charge' data submitted by the Ministry of Economy and Finance on the 6th to Seo Il-jun, a member of the National Assembly's Planning and Finance Committee from the People Power Party, the number of charge types reached 90 as of 2019.

The number of charges, which was 95 in 2015, decreased to 94 in 2016, 89 in 2017, and has been recorded as 90 since 2018.

According to Article 2 of the current 'Basic Act on Charge Management,' charges are defined as "monetary payment obligations other than taxes imposed according to laws related to specific public interest projects, regardless of the provision of goods or services."

Typically, representative examples include traffic generation charges that cause traffic congestion and environmental burden improvement charges that require those who cause pollution to bear the cost of treating pollutants.

The amount collected from charges currently exceeds 20 trillion won annually.

It has shown a slight upward trend from 19.1 trillion won in 2015 to 19.6 trillion won in 2016, 20.2 trillion won in 2017, 21 trillion won in 2018, and 20.4 trillion won in 2019.

The total amount of charges over five years reaches 100.3 trillion won.

Assemblyman Seo said, "Considering the difficult conditions of small business owners and self-employed people due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic and economic recession, it is necessary to consider boldly reducing charges temporarily."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.