소득금액변동통지 처분을 둘러싼 몇 가지 절차법적 쟁점들 개관(槪觀) ― 대법원 판결들을 중심으로 ― (A Review of the Supreme Court Decisions on the Issue of the so-called “Notice of Increase in Amount of Income” under Korean Income Tax Law — After the Court’s Landmark 2006 Decision —)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 서울시립대학교 서울시립대학교 법학연구소
· 수록지 정보 : 조세와 법 / 15권 / 2호 / 1 ~ 69페이지
· 저자명 : 윤지현

초록

이 글에서는 대법원 2006. 4. 20. 선고 2002두1878 전원합의체 판결로서 행정처분의 지위를 새로 획득하게 된 이른바 소득금액변동통지와 관련된 절차법적 논점을 다룬다. 특히 이 ‘전합 판결’ 후에 계속하여 선고된 다양한 논점의 판결들을 살펴보면서 전합 판결이 조세소송의 이론적 체계에 어떠한 영향을 미치고 변화를 가져왔는지를 개관하여 보고자 한다. 논의의 결과를 간단히 요약하면 다음과 같다.
첫째, 부과처분이 그러한 역할을 하듯이 소득금액변동통지는 관련된 원천징수의무의 존부나 크기를 다툴 수 있는 시간적 범위를 제약하고 특히 소득금액변동통지 처분의 시점으로 압축시키는 역할을 한다. 그 결과는 징수처분 취소소송에서 원천징수의무의 존부･크기를 다투는 일이 더 이상 가능하지 않다는 점이다.
둘째, 소득금액변동통지 처분과 원천징수의무의 성립･확정이 결부됨으로써, 부과처분의 경우에 유사하게 소득금액변동통지 처분이 적법하게 이루어져야 하고 그렇지 않으면 원천징수의무가 성립･확정되지 않는다는 결과로 이어지게 되었다. 즉 소득금액변동통지 처분의 절차적 위법이라는 논점이 새로 모습을 드러냈고 그에 따른 새로운 판례가 축적되고 있다.
셋째, 이처럼 소득금액변동통지 처분은 그 기능 면에서 부과처분과 비슷한 면이 있는데, 그럼에도 불구하고 입법 측면에서 부과처분에 적용되는 제도가 아직 소득금액변동통지 처분에 마련되지 못한 것이 있다. 제척기간에 관한 것이 특히 그러한데, 소득금액변동통지 처분이 절차적 위법을 이유로 취소될 수 있다면 특히 제척기간의 특례에 관한 규정을 마련할 필요가 절실하다.
넷째, 원천징수의 법률관계는 3자 관계이므로 이 때문에 생기는 까다로운 문제들이 있다. 특히 원천징수의무자･원천납세의무자가 각각 원고로 된 소송이 병존할 가능성, 그리고 원천납세의무자가 법인을 상대로 이루어진 소득금액변동통지 처분의 취소를 적법하게 구할 수 있도록 할 필요성에 관하여 관심을 기울여야 한다.

영어초록

Under Korean corporate income tax law, when a tax assessment is made, the tax authorities are also required to further examine whether the corresponding corporate asset or profit is still inside the corporate solution. If it is not and found out to have gone out to the hands of someone else so that it has become his or her taxable income, the tax may be collected, according to income tax law, from the corporation. It is in line with the general tendency of Korean income tax law that withholding is expansively used as means of tax collection.
In truth, this is not a case of typical tax withholding in that the relevant asset or profit has already been transferred to the individual taxpayer without the corporation, the withholding agent, has never had any chance to withhold income tax. However, the Korean Income Tax Act insists on calling it withholding, and so as to facilitate the so-called withholding procedure, has invented a peculiar legal fiction. Under this fiction, the tax authorities serve a document titled “Notice of Increase in Amount of Income” (“NIAI”) on the corporation, and when this NIAI has been duly served, the relevant payment of income is deemed to take place. Consequently, the duty of withholding arises at this very moment. This unique feature of Korean income tax act has long been in use, and effectively employed by the tax authorities in securing tax revenue when they have difficulty in collecting tax from individual taxpayers.
When it comes to procedural aspects of this NIAI, the controversial issue was what type of lawsuit the corporation whould file to dispute the withholding tax. The Korean system of tax litigation, which has largely been influenced by the German and the Japanese system, is in a large part built on the concept of “administrative act,” and usual tax assessments generally qualify as administrative acts. A refusal to correct a tax return made by a taxpayer may also falls under this category of “administrative act.” However, the Supreme Court of Korea before 2006, had consistently held that the NIAI is not an administrative act, thus cannot be invalidated by the court’s “cancelation decision.” Since the “cancelation lawsuit” was and still is by far the best known and most frequently used form of lawsuit under the Korean system of administrative procedure, this holding had given headache to the taxpayers and their legal advisers. The holding had long been subject to broad and intense criticism, and finally, the Supreme Court of Korea in 2006 overturned this old and well-established case law to hold that the NIAI is an administrative act, and thus can be invalidated by a court’s “cancelation decision.” A new series of decisions followed, building on this new holding and gradually formed a new system of case law with respect to various procedural issues of the NIAI. Now that longer than fifteen years of time have passed since the 2006 decision, this article is an attempt to recollect and review those important decisions that constitute the foregoing new system of the NIAI. In all, twelve decisions are reviewed with their basic facts and the legal issues of each respective case, and given short comments by this author. The Supreme Court appears basically to have succeeded in forming a fairly coherent set of case law, but in a few decisions the author believes that more and better reasoning could and should have been presented to justify the final holdings. It is also submitted that, once the NIAI has been recognized as an important legal concept in the entire system of tax procedures, there are places where the relevant statutory acts should include more provisions that explicity regulate this concept.

참고자료

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