'Approval rate for property tax bill in 2% range; income tax also faces strong opposition'

People Power Party lawmaker Kang Min-kuk [Kang's office]
People Power Party lawmaker Kang Min-kuk [Kang's office]

Only 3.1 percent of public comments submitted during the legislative notice period for the government's tax reform package explicitly expressed support for the plan. Opposition outnumbered support by roughly 13 to one.

Data released Tuesday by the office of People Power Party lawmaker Kang Min-kuk, obtained from the Ministry of Economy and Finance, showed that 17,248 comments on 11 proposed tax law amendments were received through the Public Participation Legislative Center from Aug. 4 to Aug. 20.

Of those, 534 comments — about 3.1 percent of the total — explicitly backed the proposals. Opposition comments numbered 6,857, or 39.7 percent, roughly 13 times the number in favor.

The comprehensive real estate tax bill drew the most responses, receiving 9,372 comments — more than half of all submissions. Of those, 3,165 were opposed and just 190 were in favor, putting the approval rate at 2.03 percent.

The income tax bill drew the second-highest volume of comments, at 4,082. Opposition comments numbered 1,732, about 7.6 times the 228 in favor, for an overall approval rate of 5.59 percent.

"The flood of more than 17,000 comments during the notice period, with barely 3 percent in support, is not mere concern — it is clear public resistance to taxation," Kang said. "The approval rate for the most sensitive measure, the comprehensive real estate tax, sits in the 2 percent range, and even the income tax bill faces overwhelming opposition."

Kang added that pushing ahead with a tax reform plan that 97 percent of the public has rejected amounts to "closed-mindedness and dogmatic stubbornness." He said he would work through the National Assembly's standing committee review process to conduct a full, ground-up reassessment of the problematic provisions in line with the public's wishes.


mp1256@heraldcorp.com