People Power Party leader Jang Dong-hyeok speaks at a supreme council meeting at the National Assembly on Thursday. [Yonhap]
People Power Party leader Jang Dong-hyeok speaks at a supreme council meeting at the National Assembly on Thursday. [Yonhap]

People Power Party leader Jang Dong-hyeok on Thursday accused the Lee Jae Myung government of burying "tax landmines" throughout its proposed tax reform package. "We thought they had only prepared a real estate tax bomb, but tax landmines are planted all over the reform plan," Jang said.

In a Facebook post Thursday, Jang said the government had "drastically extended the eligibility requirement for the family business inheritance deduction from 10 years to 30 years, and cut the number of eligible industries from 1,205 to 727 — nearly half." He called it "effectively saying they won't give the deduction at all."

Jang added that the preferential value-added tax deduction rate on credit card sales for self-employed business owners would be reduced, along with the deduction cap. "Self-employed workers are furious — the government gives them a 150,000-won ($106) subsidy and then takes back 5 million won in taxes," he said.

He also criticized the elimination of the 40 percent additional income deduction for public transit spending under the credit card deduction scheme, reduced deduction caps for traditional markets, books and performances, and the end of the individual consumption tax exemption for eco-friendly hybrid vehicles, saying the government was "planning to pick ordinary people's pockets clean."

"Through all of this, they say they will collect an additional 3.44 trillion won over the next five years," Jang said. "The goal is not 'tax normalization' — it is tax hikes. They want to make the people poorer and the government richer."

Jang went on to say the government wanted to build "a country where hardworking people are penalized, a country where people live dependent on subsidies." He warned that Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro had pursued the same path, adding, "If we continue like this, our future will not be much different."


mp1256@heraldcorp.com