By Yoon Ja-young
The country marked a 2.8 trillion won budget surplus last year, after three years of deficit. The increase in real estate transactions last year helped the government expand its tax revenue.
The Ministry of Strategy and Finance closed its book for the fiscal year 2015, Friday. The government’s gross revenue stood at 328.1 trillion won ($273.8 billion), while gross expenditure was 319.4 trillion won. When excluding the 5.9 trillion won carried forward, it recorded a 2.8 trillion won surplus.
Among the gross revenue, 217.9 trillion won was tax revenue while 110.2 trillion won came from other sources. Tax revenue increased by 12.4 trillion won from the previous year, and the government collected 2.2 trillion won more than it had originally planned.
The government explained that the increase in tax revenue was due to improvements in asset markets which led to increased transactions in real estate and stocks. The revised tax code also decreased tax exemptions and tax cuts for conglomerates as well as increasing taxes collected from those in the top income bracket.
Real estate transactions stood at around 682,3000 last year, is an 18 percent increase from the previous year. This helped the government collect 3.8 trillion won more in capital gains taxes. As stock transactions increased 36 percent in the main bourse KOSPI and 81.1 percent in the junior tech-heavy Kosdaq market, the securities transaction tax collected an additional 1.5 trillion won.
Despite falling operating profits of businesses, the government gained 2.4 trillion won extra in corporate taxes by scrapping diverse tax exemptions and tax cuts.
The government collected 1.7 trillion won from a consumption tax on cigarettes and reaped 1.7 trillion won more in earned income taxes. It cited an increase in the number of employed people as well as the rise in nominal age as factors that led to more earned income taxes. The number of full-time workers totaled 12.6 million in 2015, up 3.6 percent from the previous year. The average monthly salary for employees at businesses that employ five people or more stood at 3.2 million won last year, which is 3.1 percent more than the previous year.