Kim Tae-ho
A man became financially strapped due to wage garnishment for tax debt and could not pay the hospital bills for his old mother who had dementia. He filed a complaint at the tax office in his jurisdiction.
Seeing that it was an excessive measure to garnish his wages when other assets seizures already enforced tax claims, the Taxpayer Advocacy Committee requested the termination of the wage garnishment, restoring normalcy for him.
When the audit team halted the audit in the interim prolonging the whole process, another man suffered from a significant setback in his business. He requested taxpayer advocacy at the tax office in his jurisdiction.
The Taxpayer Advocacy Committee judged that the suspension of the audit was illegal on the grounds that a conventional tax audit could be performed through a tax preparer even while he was on an overseas business trip. With the resumption of the tax audit, the man was able to get back to his business after the speedy completion of the tax audit.
The above cases exemplify how taxpayer rights were protected through the complaint filing system and request for taxpayer advocacy.
Up until now, the National Tax Service (NTS) of Korea continuously secured the necessary institutional foundation to reinforce taxpayer rights. To notify taxpayer rights protected by the Constitution and relevant laws, the Charter of Taxpayers’ Rights was written.
The Taxpayer Advocacy Bureau and Taxpayer Advocacy Committee were formed to faithfully perform checks and monitor tax administration such as tax audits. The request for taxpayer advocacy and a complaint filing system were also in place to protect the rights of taxpayers. Between 2009 and 2022, a total of 16,978 requests for taxpayer advocacy were addressed, and a total of 56,051 complaints were admitted.
However, due to ever-changing socioeconomic conditions, it is not easy to protect all taxpayers’ substantive and procedural rights and realize fair taxation at the same time.
In this vein, the NTS launched the Tax Administration Capacity Building Task Force to come up with measures to innovate tax services to relieve any tax payment inconveniences and to strengthen transparent and responsible taxation.
In previous requests for taxpayer advocacy, only requests related to tax audits were deliberated in the Taxpayer Advocacy Committee. As a result of innovative efforts, the taxpayer advocacy scope was expanded to overall tax administration affairs including protection against excessive demand for explanatory materials submission.
In addition, taxpayers are now given the right to express their opinions during the Taxpayer Advocacy Committee’s deliberation process regarding the period of extension and scope expansion for tax audits, so that they are guaranteed the opportunity to protest and thus be provided with more robust taxpayer rights protection.
In the future, we will continue to make adjustments so that taxpayers will be guaranteed their due rights under the advocacy system with more ease and convenience by, for example, publishing a user’s guide for easy-to-understand advocacy requests and expanding the video testimony system at the Taxpayer Advocacy Committee.
As such, the NTS will strive for measures to enhance taxpayer rights based on proactive administration, and actively protect rights and redress grievances with quick responses to the fast-changing tax administration environment so that we can fulfill our mission of becoming the “NTS of the People, Trusted Tax Administration.”
The writer is the vice commissioner of the National Tax Service.
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