160,000 Wage Earners Who Received Last Year's Disaster Relief Fund Donate 51.3 Billion KRW
[Sejong=Asia Economy Reporter Kim Hyunjung] Among wage earners who received the nationwide disaster relief fund in May to respond to the COVID-19 crisis, 160,000 people donated approximately 51.3 billion KRW in support funds. According to income quintiles, higher-income earners donated more.
According to data received from the National Tax Service by the office of Yang Kyungsook, a member of the National Assembly’s Planning and Finance Committee from the Democratic Party of Korea, the year-end tax settlement results for wage income in 2020 showed that a total of 156,931 people donated last year’s nationwide disaster relief funds, amounting to 51.272 billion KRW.
These figures estimate the number of wage earners who donated and the amount donated, so there is a difference from the total number of donors and donation amounts overall.
The government stated that it paid disaster relief funds totaling 14.2372 trillion KRW to 22.16 million households last year, of which 278.35 billion KRW (736,000 cases) was donated for vulnerable groups. Considering this, among the 736,000 donation cases, about 150,000 were donated by wage earners. However, cases not eligible for tax credit due to under-taxation or those who did not apply for the support fund and were automatically processed as donations were not included in the 150,000 cases.
Looking at donations by wage income quintile, the top 10% of wage earners donated 31.985 billion KRW, accounting for 62.4% of the total donations by wage earners. The top 20% donated 6.869 billion KRW (13.4%), and the top 30% donated 3.939 billion KRW (7.7%), showing that donations decreased as income decreased.
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By region, Seoul had the highest donation amount at 17.09 billion KRW (33.3%), followed by Gyeonggi with 11.413 billion KRW (22.3%), Busan with 2.374 billion KRW (4.6%), and Gyeongnam with 2.264 billion KRW (4.4%). Other regions ranged between 1.0% and 3.0%. Sejong was recorded at 1.249 billion KRW (2.4%).
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