Gwangju Nam-gu, Village Tax Accountants Actively Resolving Residents' Grievances

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Jin-hyung] Nam-gu, Gwangju Metropolitan City (District Mayor Kim Byung-nae) is operating a village tax accountant system to provide free tax consultations to residents, and it has been identified that the village tax accountants in the district are greatly helping to resolve local residents' difficulties.

According to Nam-gu on the 28th, the 10 third-term village tax accountants active in the district vigorously assisted low-income and small business owners who lacked tax-related knowledge or could not receive help from tax experts due to economic difficulties last year.

The number of consultations in the first and second halves of last year were 893 and 922 respectively, with an average of 181.5 consultations per village tax accountant, receiving great responses from residents.

The consultation requests from residents were overwhelmingly related to national taxes such as capital gains tax.

Looking at the consultation status by tax category, consultations on the national capital gains tax accounted for 993 cases, making up 54.7% of the total consultations.

Next were gift tax with 250 cases, corporate income tax with 124 cases, inheritance tax with 84 cases, and comprehensive real estate holding tax with 75 cases.

Regarding local tax consultations, acquisition tax was the highest with 175 cases, followed by property tax with 36 cases and local income tax with 21 cases.

A Nam-gu official stated, “We will do our best to operate the village tax accountant system to provide customized free tax consultation services targeting small business owners and vulnerable residents, reducing economic burdens such as consultation costs, and enabling prompt consultations within the neighborhood.”

Meanwhile, Nam-gu recently appointed 8 people as the fourth-term village tax accountants, who will be responsible for providing services including consultations on national and local taxes as well as local tax appeal consultations for two years from this year until the end of next year.

Residents wishing to consult with a village tax accountant can receive telephone, fax, or email consultations through the village tax accountant assigned to the administrative welfare center of their residential dong, and if the first consultation is insufficient, they can visit the village tax accountant’s office to receive direct consultation after paying a prescribed consultation fee.