Recently, the trend of donating gifts has grown significantly due to rising house prices and tax burdens. As of 2019, the total amount of inherited and gifted assets was totaled at 112.980.8 billion won. In the past five years, inherited and gifted property has soared 42%, reaching 113 trillion won.
According to the data received from the National Tax Service by Democratic Party lawmaker Yang Gyeong-sook on the 9th, the total amount of inherited and gifted assets in 2019 was 1,112,980 billion won.
This is an increase of 41.8% from the inherited and donated property in 2015 (79 trillion 6847 billion won).
Breaking down in detail, the gifted property increased significantly, while the inherited property decreased slightly. The gifted property surged 89.8% from 39.35 trillion won in 2015 to 74 trillion 94.7 billion won in 2019. On the other hand, inherited property decreased by 4.4% from 40,649.2 billion won to 38,871 billion won over the same period.
According to the Korea Real Estate Agency, the number of home donations nationwide last year was 15,2427, a record increase of 37.5%. Assemblyman Yang analyzed that “As the inheritance and gift tax deduction rate, which was 10% until 2016, has been gradually reduced, it seems that the gifted property has increased by donating property in advance.”
The huge increase in donations also contributed to the recent increase in house prices and the government’s strengthening of multi-household regulations. According to the Korea Real Estate Agency, the number of home donations nationwide last year was 15,2427, a record increase of 37.5%.
The direct cause is the rising tax burden, such as the transfer tax. The government introduced a heavy duty transfer tax system for multi-homeowners, which increases the basic tax rate (6~45%) by 10 percentage points from houses transferred after April 2018. Here, starting in June, when multi-homed people sell their homes, taxes are added to the basic tax rate by up to 30 percentage points, and the burden on the transfer tax will be higher.
For multi-homed people, it is better to give gifts to family members such as children than to pay high taxes and sell a house to others. The gift tax rate is 10-50% and can receive property deductions of up to 600 million won, so the tax burden is less for multi-homed people than transferring them.
In fact, the proportion of buildings among the gifted property was KRW 5.82 trillion in 2017 to KRW 8,141.3 billion in 2019, a much larger increase than other properties.
Due to the influence of various deductions, the size of inherited and gifted property subject to taxation was small compared to the size of inherited and gifted property. Inheritance tax is taxed by applying personal deductions such as spouse inheritance deductions and physical deductions such as family business and farming inheritance deductions to the basic deduction of 200 million won. Gift tax is deducted from spouse deduction of 600 million won and direct survivorship of 50 million won from the taxable amount.
Among the total inherited and donated property in 2019, taxable property was found to be 73,758.6 billion won (65.3%).
The top 0.1% (170 cases) of taxable gifted property is 2,944 billion won, which is 17.3 billion, 2294 million won per case. In addition, the top 1% (84 persons) of taxable inherited property was 2,873.1 billion won, which was 34.2 billion.357 million won per person.
Rep. Yang said, “In a situation where asset income rises higher than earned income, it is necessary to improve the system to rationalize the inheritance of wealth and strengthen the expedient gift investigation.”
[김정환 기자]
[ⓒ 매일경제 & mk.co.kr, 무단전재 및 재배포 금지]