지가앙등과 토지세제문제에 관한 일 연구

지가 상승과 토지세제의 문제 및 개선 방향을 연구했다.

During the last three decades, the Korean economy has experienced a rapid growth due to a rather successful series of economic development plans, the first of which was implemented in 1962. During this period, however, land prices have risen constantly due in part to the unequal distribution of land ownership and to the increasing demand for land. The increase in land prices have resulted in an upward spiral of housing prices. This situation has made it difficult, especially for low and moderate income families, to own their own shelters. The housing shortage problem become severe, particularly in large cities such as Seoul and Pusan.

The rapid increase in land prices also made infrastructure development difficult, which has become a rather serious obstacle for the stability and continuous development of Korean society. In this situation only a small number of people and corporations who owned big lands could take advantage of the rising land prices, which eventually had led to a serious social conflicts between the haves and have-nots. Thus, the Korean government has recently taken a drastic step to promote reform measures such as the limitation of property rights, to stabilize the land prices and to solve the social conflicts cause by unequal distribution of land ownership.

The recent governments reform measures are based on two policy concepts in response to land speculation : direct control over land ownership and the social recapture of windfall profits, the unearned income arising from land price inflation. Such policy concepts have been called "the public conception of land". The concept has set the legal basis for controlling and limiting the rights to personal property. Based on this new concept, three anti-speculation measures have been recently taken by the government : the Urban Residential Land ownership Ceilings Act, the Land Value Increment Tax and Land Development Charges.

The Urban Residential Land Ownership Ceiling Act which was passed at the national Assembly in 1989, restricts individuals and corporations from owning residential Land of over and above 600 sq. meters in the six major large cities including Seoul. The Land Value Increment Tax is to recapture the windfall gains from real estates before they are actually realized. The taxpayer is anyone(an individual, corporation, or non-profit entity) who owns value incremented land : i.e., idle lands such factory sites, training center land, resort home sites, farm land and other lands including those exceeding the standard size for buildings.

The land Development Charge System is to levy charges upon lands being developed for residential and industrial purposes when such development projects are formally approved by local authorities. Unlike the Land Value Increment Tax, this law is designed to take away much of the value increment resulting from the development period authorized by the government. Now the questions are, are these new land laws being supported by the people in this country? If not, what is the reason behind not being supported by the people? If they are supported by the public opinion, what are the grounds for the peoples approval? These were the major questions pursued by this study.

The researcher carried out a public opinion poll to respondents who were basically middle class people in Korea. They are rather well educated people having at least a high school diploma. There were 661 respondents in total. The result of data analysis shows that the majority of these middle-class respondents tended to support the above mentioned newly-introduced public conception of land and the new tax laws. People seemed to believe that these new laws will contribute, to a large extent to discouragement to land speculation, and thus to stabilization of land prices in the country.

Actually, the majority of the respondents wanted to see these laws to strengthened more in order to restrict land ownership more substantially. The policy implication of these findings is significant one in that the government can take stricter measures against land speculation to stabilize the land prices and to reduce social conflicts between the rich and the poor.