A Study on the Effectiveness of the Korean Administrative Tax Appeal System

Abstract

Governments collect tax forcibly without any individual compensation in the case of the taxation requirement set by law for the purpose of covering their expenses. In this process, a lawful or unreasonable tax disposition can be carried out by a tax office, and some persons rights or interests can be infringed by the disposition. Therefore, tax appeal system should be provided for prompt and appropriate protection of their rights.

In the tax appeal system, there are judicial tax appeal system like administrative lawsuit and administrative tax appeal systems such as ENTS (the request for examination by the National Tax Service), ATT (the request for adjudgment by the Tax Tribunal), EBAI (the request for examination by the Board of Audit and Inspection), Objections and Pre-assessment Review. Especially ENTS, ATT and EBAI among them are very important because taxpayers must go through one of the above three procedures in order to file an administrative lawsuit in terms of internal tax. This research studies the effectiveness of the administrative tax appeal system in the perspective related to functional duplication.

When I comprehensively analyze the three administrative tax appeal systems (ENTS, ATT, EBAI) in the perspective of intent (purpose), organization in charge, target group (tax items), subject of trial and provided service(decision), their organizations in charge are different but actually they carry out almost the same functions such as prompt protection of taxpayers rights and control of tax administration.

This functional duplication in the national tax appeal administration can provide taxpayers with the opportunity of selection among three procedures, contribute to preventing wrong decisions, and bring an expansion of service to taxpayers through the competition between tax appeal agencies. However, it can lead to decrease the efficiency in the viewpoint of efficient allocation of resources, make it difficult to deal with tax appeal cases consistently through different or even conflicting decisions among three procedures, bring taxpayers confusion and decrease the trust in tax appeal administration.

Therefore, it is needed to find out various ways to settle that functional duplication. This study suggests ways of strengthening horizontal cooperation (coordination) and vertical coordination and measures for adjustment of function. As the ways of horizontal cooperation and coordination, there are various methods such as forming a consultative group, making business agreement, promoting personal exchanges, strengthening formal or informal exchanges, and construction of information sharing system. Also, as the ways of vertical coordination, this study presents prioritizing legal interpretations of three institutions and adjustment or modification by higher body.

As one of measures for adjustment of function, this research suggests mutual transfer of function. For example, we can make ENTS or EBAI deal with the tax cases of small amount asked or indirect tax cases while making ATT handle those of large amount cases or direct tax cases. Also, there is reorganizing method as the other measure for adjustment of function. As the reorganizing method, we can think of integrating ENTS and ATT and abolishing EBAI. In relation to the integration, we can consider the method of integrating ATT into ENTS or the method of integrating ENTS into ATT. The method of integrating ENTS into ATT can be somewhat more desirable because ATT has more quasi-judicial procedures and taxpayers have higher preference for ATT.