By Nam Sang-so
Chairman Lee Kun-hee of Samsung Electronics passed away Oct. 25. My house is next to his residence and our engineering design office is in the neighborhood of Hannam-dong, Seoul, and I have had a few opportunities to work for Samsung in designing factories in the Suwon Samsung Estate. I write this article with a heavy heart.
On his demise, local newspapers reported that the amount of inheritance tax might reach a sum of 10 trillion won ($8.9 billion), out of his total assets of about 18 trillion won, which the heirs apparent must pay.
It's more than half of the assets he gained during his "tenure." Korea, and Japan have the highest rates of inheritance tax in the world. There are countries that do not have any inheritance tax such as Mexico, China, India, Canada, Australia and Sweden. Even Russia is known to have abolished such a tax. And they are doing fine economically.
The lawmakers who prepared and approved the high taxes on inheritance and gift taxes in Korea must have been socialist idealists. Or they might have had a subconscious envious feeling about those born with a silver spoon in their mouths.
There must be a lot of people ― not only those who participated in creating exorbitantly high tax laws ― who may feel joy when a rich person gets involved in a scandal or caught by law enforcement for tax evasion.
Furthermore, the common people usually applaud when the National Tax Service imposes such high inheritance or gift taxes, while at the same time they too are somewhat skeptical about the justification of the high cumulative taxation.
Still, there are not too many people who complain about such a tax system that targets the rich because average people feel rich people should be paying higher taxes. But, they are forgetting an important fact ― that money finds the purse of a businessman much warmer and heavier and attempts to produce lots of offspring in there, while the government purse is wide open and money goes out recklessly.
Even so, most rich people naturally want to leave as much of their wealth as possible to their children while paying as little tax as possible. It's actually easy to do so in one's sunset years ― just spend all the money you have earned in your lifetime before you die on the principle that the assets one has accumulated are for one generation only.
"Keep squeezing, the money to be taxed will appear" was once a rather famous tax office slogan in Seoul. And a large framed calligraphy image of the motto was hung on the wall next to a portrait of the country's president.
The frightening sign has disappeared, however, as the tax office realized that potential tax evaders who had seen such an intimidating warning had started to keep their account books clean and dry.
The writer (sangsonam@gmail.com) is a retired architect/engineer living in Seoul. The views expressed in the above article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.
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On his demise, local newspapers reported that the amount of inheritance tax might reach a sum of 10 trillion won ($8.9 billion), out of his total assets of about 18 trillion won, which the heirs apparent must pay.
It's more than half of the assets he gained during his "tenure." Korea, and Japan have the highest rates of inheritance tax in the world. There are countries that do not have any inheritance tax such as Mexico, China, India, Canada, Australia and Sweden. Even Russia is known to have abolished such a tax. And they are doing fine economically.
The lawmakers who prepared and approved the high taxes on inheritance and gift taxes in Korea must have been socialist idealists. Or they might have had a subconscious envious feeling about those born with a silver spoon in their mouths.
There must be a lot of people ― not only those who participated in creating exorbitantly high tax laws ― who may feel joy when a rich person gets involved in a scandal or caught by law enforcement for tax evasion.
Furthermore, the common people usually applaud when the National Tax Service imposes such high inheritance or gift taxes, while at the same time they too are somewhat skeptical about the justification of the high cumulative taxation.
Still, there are not too many people who complain about such a tax system that targets the rich because average people feel rich people should be paying higher taxes. But, they are forgetting an important fact ― that money finds the purse of a businessman much warmer and heavier and attempts to produce lots of offspring in there, while the government purse is wide open and money goes out recklessly.
Even so, most rich people naturally want to leave as much of their wealth as possible to their children while paying as little tax as possible. It's actually easy to do so in one's sunset years ― just spend all the money you have earned in your lifetime before you die on the principle that the assets one has accumulated are for one generation only.
"Keep squeezing, the money to be taxed will appear" was once a rather famous tax office slogan in Seoul. And a large framed calligraphy image of the motto was hung on the wall next to a portrait of the country's president.
The frightening sign has disappeared, however, as the tax office realized that potential tax evaders who had seen such an intimidating warning had started to keep their account books clean and dry.
The writer (sangsonam@gmail.com) is a retired architect/engineer living in Seoul. The views expressed in the above article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.
