[김예린 변호사·이데일리 박종화 기자] This year too, the tax bills came in. Compared to last year, the amount of tax levied more than tripled, and the number of taxpayers increased by 42%. It’s even about to move to an unconstitutional lawsuit.
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The estate tax is a holding tax that is payable when you own high-value real estate. There is a problem in that even if no income has been generated from the sale of real estate, etc., it is necessary to bear the burden. As house prices have recently risen sharply and the government has made the official price a reality (reducing the difference between the official price and the market price), the burden of the property tax has risen sharply in the past few years. As the property tax rate for multi-family homeowners has risen particularly high, there have been many cases where people who own two or more apartments in Seoul have to pay hundreds of millions of won in property tax every year.
Will there be any problems if the government continues to tighten the tax rate? In 2008, the Constitutional Court made a decision once on the taxation. At that time, the Constitutional Court did not take particular issue with the imposition of the tax as it was justified in terms of the equity of the tax burden. However, the decision was made unconstitutional on the grounds that applying a high rate of progressive tax even to those who own one house for a long time for residential purposes would greatly infringe on individual property rights.
It may be considered unconstitutional if any part of an individual’s property rights are infringed, but this is not necessarily the case. According to Article 37 (2) of the Constitution, “All freedoms and rights of citizens may be restricted by law only when necessary for national security, maintenance of order, or public welfare.” If there is a cause of public interest, it means that there are cases where the violation of basic rights is acceptable. The issue of inheritance tax should also be looked at from this point of view. It is highly likely that the imposition of this tax will be decided as constitutional, just like the previous decision of the Constitutional Court.
However, the issue of imposing a high rate of endowment tax on multi-homeowners can be judged differently. Individuals have the right to pursue happiness through a comfortable residential life, and a ‘house’ is an indispensable place to realize these rights. Because of this special value of housing, more stringent constitutional examination standards should be applied to determine whether measures such as taxes to stabilize housing prices are justified. Imposing a high rate of property tax can result in the confiscation of the entire real estate value as tax within a short period of time, and thus the degree of infringement of individual property rights can be very serious. Considering the fact that even non-income earners who do not have the ability to pay taxes are subject to the same tax burden as high-income earners, it is highly likely that the imposition of a high rate of taxation on multi-family households will be unconstitutional.
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