A practicing tax accountant who sat this year's tax accountant exam has said a perfect score is "impossible" and "makes no sense," amid cheating allegations surrounding the top scorer, who answered 159 out of 160 questions correctly.
Kim Jae-hwan, a tax attorney and former National Tax Service investigator, raised serious doubts Friday on his YouTube channel about the top scorer's results. Kim took particular issue with the explanation given by the top scorer, identified only as A, who said the use of the "elimination method" — ruling out wrong answers — allowed them to score a perfect 100 on the Introduction to Tax Law section, where the average score among all test-takers was just 30 points.
A scored 100 on Introduction to Tax Law, Introduction to Accounting and Commercial Law, dropping only one question in the fiscal studies section. The average score on the contested Introduction to Tax Law section was 30.18 points.
"The elimination method is not some special technique — everyone taking any multiple-choice exam, whether it's the bar exam or the tax accountant exam, uses the elimination method," Kim said. "If anything, I might have thought, 'well, maybe,' if they had said they just guessed on some questions and happened to get them all right."
Kim displayed the exam paper for the Introduction to Tax Law section, which features lengthy questions, to illustrate the difficulty. "There are 40 questions in fiscal studies and 40 in tax law — roughly one minute per question," he said. "When you look at the questions, they are not something you can solve in under a minute."
In fact, when Kim worked through the Introduction to Tax Law section himself over 80 minutes, he scored 37.5 out of 100. "I have studied tax law for more than 10 years, and I got 15 out of 40 questions right — some of those by guessing," he said.
"The questions have gotten harder than before — more than 10 calculation problems come up," Kim said. "Scoring 100 is impossible. It makes no sense. Having worked through it myself, that feeling only got stronger."
Kim said that even measured against his own career, a perfect score would be virtually out of reach. "Even for someone like me — a practicing tax accountant, a tax attorney and a former NTS investigator — solving every Introduction to Tax Law question in one minute each and getting them all right is the realm of the divine," he said. "It's like a runner appearing who is better than Usain Bolt and running the 100 meters in under eight seconds."
Kim went on to say he felt like filing a criminal complaint just to get to the truth of the matter.
Meanwhile, A retained a lawyer Friday as the cheating allegations continued to spread. The Korea Tax Accountants Association had already called on the relevant ministry and agencies to launch a formal investigation, and A moved to respond through legal counsel.
Lee Don-ho, managing partner at law firm Nova, confirmed he had taken on A's case. "Our client will faithfully cooperate with any procedures necessary to verify the facts of this matter," Lee said.
bbo@heraldcorp.com
