Yoon expresses his will to ease inheritance tax to support stock prices

Ban Ki-woong 2024. 1. 22. 17:35
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President Yoon Suk-yeol delivers concluding remarks at the \


President Yoon Suk-yeol has expressed his will to ease Korea’s inheritance tax, emphasizing that not only those who directly benefit from the tax relief but also retail investors can benefit from it.

Yoon said at a public discussion on January 17, “Minority shareholders benefit only when their stock prices rise, but from the perspective of major shareholders, if their stock prices rise too much, they will be subject to a huge inheritance tax," adding, "Excessive taxation that hinders the development of the stock market hurts the middle class and the common people." This means that it is a tax cut for the common people as reducing the burden of inheritance tax on major shareholders will revive the stock market and benefit all stock investors. Following the "corporate tax cut for the common people theory" that lowering corporate taxes will revive companies and eventually benefit independent investors, the common people have been put forward again.

Yoon explained that if excessive inheritance tax is reduced, the middle class and the common people will eventually benefit. This is different from the existing approach, which focused mainly on corporate succession issues, such as weakening management rights, due to excessive inheritance and gift taxes.

Major shareholders are passive in managing stock prices because the higher the stock price, the greater the burden of inheritance tax, therefore, minority shareholders suffer great losses. On the contrary, if the inheritance tax is lowered, major shareholders will be active in supporting the stock price, and the inheritance tax cut will benefit minority shareholders. In other words, it is expected that the problem of deliberately lowering the stock price to pay less inheritance tax during the inheritance and donation period will also be resolved.

However, experts said that it is unreasonable to support stock prices by easing inheritance tax. They point out that there is no clear correlation between inheritance tax and stock prices, and there is no evidence that tax cuts boost stock prices.

"Inheritance is an important factor, but it has not been confirmed to what extent stock prices are affected by inheritance," said Ha Joon-kyung, a professor at Hanyang University. "If major shareholders neglect to manage stock prices and deliberately drop stock prices, the opacity of governance that does not prevent such actions is a problem, not the inheritance tax."

Kim Yoo-chan, a professor at Hongik University said, "The government's current tax cuts are concentrated in areas where there is no trickle-down effect, such as incomes from asset transfer like real estate and stocks, and corporate and inheritance taxes. It is concerned that the primary distribution effect in the market and the secondary distribution effect through finances and taxes will all deteriorate due to the government's restructuring of spending."

※This article has undergone review by a professional translator after being translated by an AI translation tool.

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