지방분권 강화와 레저산업 활성화를 위한 레저세의 개선방안

Due to increased income and the settlement of the five－day work week, there has been growing national interest in various leisure activities, and the population that enjoys leisure activities are rising rapidly. However, some leisure activities are still treated as speculative industries and are applied leisure taxes. Such leisure tax is a type of regulation and is basically a price to be paid for external diseconomy effects caused by this. Speculative industries refer to industries that produce materials or services pursuing profits by using the speculative dispositions of humans. Such speculative industries that are taxed with leisure tax include horse racing, bicycle racing, boat racing, and bull fighting, while those that are subject to leisure tax are casinos, lotteries, and sports betting. The current leisure tax should be reformed in the following direction. First, it is advisable to expand the current target of leisure taxes to similar businesses in the speculative industry such as casinos, lotteries and sports betting. In other words, in order to maintain horizontal tax fairness among businesses within the speculative industry and to maintain the beneficiary and causer pay principle for the external diseconomy, it is necessary to add casinos, lotteries, and sports betting for leisure taxes. In particular, when examining statistics on sales and number of visitors, the impact for businesses subject to leisure tax and businesses not subject to leisure tax is considerable. This can be viewed as the result of violating tax fairness. Furthermore, as they are businesses that can lead to similar external diseconomies, it is necessary to apply leisure taxes to all businesses in the speculative industry even for the sake of internalization of the region. Second, by transferring special consumption taxes to provincial taxes as leisure taxes for admissions (horse racing, golf course, casino, bike racing, boat racing) and entertainment and food (entertainment, food and drink restaurants, restaurants exclusively for foreigners) that are highly related to the region among those currently subject to special consumption taxes, it should aim at internalizing the external diseconomy effect. Third, according to the current tax distribution standards between metropolitan cities and provinces and primary local governments for leisure taxes, parts of leisure taxes are distributed through collection subsidies and general fiscal compensation for primary local governments that are home to speculative industries. The finances of the said primary local governments are worsening due to external diseconomies such as traffic congestion, damage of scenery near stadiums, garbage, etc. In result, such distribution standards do not provide sufficient compensation for the current tax distribution, and is not a complete beneficiary and causer pay principle. Therefore, it is necessary to distribute the current leisure tax to primary local governments in which the speculative industry business is located. By making such improvements to the leisure tax, it will be possible to not only strengthen decentralization, but also be more suitable to the beneficiary and causer pay principle that reflects the external diseconomy characteristic of speculative industries.