The Top Professional Business Income Earner is Doctors... Twice the Level of Lawyers

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[Asia Economy Reporter Kwangho Lee] The reported business income of individual medical practitioners, including doctors and Korean medicine doctors, exceeded 200 million KRW as of 2018.

According to the "Comprehensive Income Reporting by Profession" data submitted by the National Tax Service to the National Assembly's Planning and Finance Committee on the 20th, the number of medical industry filers for the 2018 tax year was 72,715, with a total reported business income amounting to 16.4639 trillion KRW.

When converted to business income per person, it amounts to approximately 226.4 million KRW annually, ranking first among professionals such as lawyers, patent attorneys, accountants, tax accountants, and customs brokers.

The profession with the second highest business income per person after the medical industry was lawyers, with an average reported amount of 115.8 million KRW in the same year.

The average business income per person calculated from comprehensive income reports for accountants and patent attorneys was 98.3 million KRW and 79.2 million KRW, respectively.

Based on the 2015 to 2018 tax years, except for 2016, the order of business income per person was medical industry, lawyers, accountants, and patent attorneys. In 2016, patent attorneys' business income surpassed that of accountants.

The business income amount in comprehensive income is the amount obtained by deducting necessary expenses from business revenue, which corresponds to sales.

For example, the business revenue reported per medical industry practitioner is about 800 million KRW.

There is also a practice among professional individual business owners of treating goods and services used personally as expenses, so the perceived business income is known to be higher than the amount identified through reporting.

An official from the National Tax Service explained, "There are differences in workforce employment depending on the industry, and since some do not report comprehensive income, there are limitations in accurately estimating professional business income based solely on reports."

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