What Is a Flat Rate Tax?

The unified tax refers to the special tax levied to raise funds needed to "realize national unification" or "serving national unification". The real reason for Li Mingbo's government to take the "uniform tax" seriously should be the German President's visit to Seoul. He suggested that South Korea learn from the lessons of German unification, and in order to reduce the impact of national unification in the future, levy a unified tax early.

Flat tax

The unified tax refers to the special tax levied to raise funds needed to "realize national unification" or "serving national unification". The real reason for Li Mingbo's government to take the "uniform tax" seriously should be the German President's visit to Seoul. He suggested that South Korea learn from the lessons of German unification, and in order to reduce the impact of national unification in the future, levy a unified tax early.

Chinese name

Flat tax

Nature

Special tax

Background

The Difference between Urgent Unification Theory and "Slow Unification Theory"

influences

Attention and controversy from all walks of life in South Korea

The South Korean government held a "celebration ceremony for the 65th anniversary of the restoration" at Gwanghwamun Plaza in Seoul on the 15th. In his speech, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak proposed that the whole society widely explore the scheme of levying a "unified tax" to prepare for the unification of the Korean peninsula. He said that Korea-DPRK relations can be unified in three stages in accordance with the order of "peace community", "economic community", and "ethnic community".

In South Korea, there has always been a distinction between "urgent unification theory" and "slow unification theory" on the issue of the unification of North and South.

During the administration of two progressive presidents, Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, the DPRK implemented a sunshine policy of national harmony and advocated a gradual unification, that is, reducing economic disparities between the two sides through economic cooperation and economic support, alleviating political and military tensions, and creating reconciliation. Atmosphere of cooperation, and then try to implement a unified system.

Conservative Lee Myung-bak has been pursuing a disguised theory of disguise when he took office. He abandoned the Sunshine policy and announced the implementation of a three-stage policy toward North Korea, such as "abandoning nuclear power-opening up-3,000 US dollars", which was met with a scorn from North Korea.

North Korea believes that abandoning nuclear power is tantamount to disarming itself without the guarantee of its own system from the international community, especially the United States. The Lee Myung-bak government opposed this and gave up all economic aid to North Korea. Although he also said that the North and the South would be "ultimately unified," it did not make any substantial progress.

Regarding the "unified tax", the opposition party in South Korea has criticized it, saying that during the Roh Moo-hyun era, a South Korea-Korea cooperation fund was established with an annual value of 1.5 trillion won (equivalent to 1.2 billion U.S. dollars). After Lee Myung-bak came to power, he almost stopped aid to North Korea. These funds were rarely used, but whimsical to collect astronomical new taxes, which was ridiculous.

The ruling party supports Li Mingbo's policy, and believes that the "unified tax" is a fundraising for the huge costs that may be brought about by the unification in the future, and is an insurance policy that reduces the future social instability. However, they also proposed that instead of levying a new tax of the "uniform tax", it would be better to restore the defense tax that has been levied or increase the value-added tax.

In fact, the "uniform tax" has long been discussed in South Korea. In 1991, the Korea Development Research Institute had proposed the idea of levying a "uniform tax", but it was ridiculed by the academic community that it was too hastily and marginal. In August 2009, the Korea Taxation Research Institute provided a report on the "Financial Impact of North-South Economic Integration", analyzing that if the North-South was unified in 2011, the tax burden (tax revenue in GDP Only by increasing 2 percentage points, that is, from the current 20% to 22%, can we cope with the cost burden caused by the unification.

The real reason for Li Mingbo's government to take the "uniform tax" seriously should be the German President's visit to Seoul. He suggested that South Korea learn from the lessons of German reunification, and in order to reduce the impact of national reunification in the future, collect "unification tax" early. Korean scholars provided a unified fee for the German government for reference: 20 years after the reunification of Germany and Germany, the unified fee paid by West Germany was about 2 trillion euros, and the personal income tax and corporate tax levied for this purpose accounted for the annual GDP. 5.5% ~ 7.5%.

It is worth mentioning that South Korea s Ministry of Unification in charge of North Korea s relations has long formulated a reunification policy toward the DPRK, specifically to write a textbook for the market economy for the Korean people and teach them how to accept the market economy. South Korea even sent experts and scholars to China to learn from the economic textbooks since China's reform. Therefore, the proposal of the "uniform tax" at this time may not be just a whim.

Proposal of "uniform tax" triggered ^[1]

German unified surcharge (Solidarit & auml; tszuschlag / Soli for short) is literally translated as "unity surcharge", but because its main purpose is to rebuild eastern Germany, it is generally understood as a kind of unification of Germany and Germany. Taxes. The unified surtax was levied from 1991. After two years of suspension in 1993 and 1994, Germany began to levy a unified surtax again throughout Germany in 1995. The rate of this surtax is levied on the base of personal and corporate income taxes 5.5%. This rate has been reduced from 7.5% to 5.5% since 1998. All its tax revenue is generated by the German federal government. However, the German Taxpayers Union said that after years of follow-up research, the German federal government's income from unified surcharges was 32 billion euros more than planned investment in Eastern Germany by 2019. Moreover, they believe that a third of the amount invested in Eastern Germany is also misused. The ruling Social Democratic Party and the Coalition Party both said on Sunday that consideration could be given to reducing or eliminating the unified surcharge.