Preparation of the Budget in Korea

Abstract

While almost all governments accept a year as the logical time-unit for the budget, there is no general agreement as to the opening date of the fiscality car: (a) January 1-December 31 Korea, Argentine, Belgium, France, Netherlands, Switzerland, U.S.S.R. (b) March 1-February 29 Turkey (c) April-March 31 Britain Canada, Japan, India, Pakistan, West Germany (d) July 1-June 30 Philippenes, Italy, Norway, Sweden (e) October 1-September 30 U.S.A., Burma, Ceylon In 1948, the government of the Republic of Korea found no reason to discard the Japanese fiscal year of April 1 to March 31. When the finance Law Promulgated in 1951, no change was made in the fiscal year. In January 1954, the Finance Law was amended to adopt a new fiscal year, which coincided with the American fiscal year. Since Korea was receiving a large sum of aid from the United States, it was allegedly neccessary to synchronize the fiscal year with that of the United States for reasonably accurate revenue estimating. In June 1956, the Finance Law was again amended and the fiscal year was changed to coincide with the calendar year. Due to these frequent changes in the fiscal year, as will be seen from Table I, the fiscal year 1956 does not exist in the Korean history of public finance.