Top 1% of firms pay nearly 90% of corporate taxes

Corporate taxes paid by the top 1 percent of South Korean businesses made up nearly 90 percent of the total, data showed Monday, suggesting that a small number of large conglomerates are dominating markets.

According to the data provided by the National Tax Service, the country’s top 1 percent out of 460,614 corporations paid a combined 32.7 trillion won ($29.8 billion) in corporate taxes last year.

The amount, from which tax exemptions and reductions were subtracted, accounted for 86.1 percent of total corporate tax payments, totaling about 37.96 trillion won.

Companies falling into the top 1 percent group paid an average of 7.1 billion won in taxes. The number of companies that did not pay taxes due to losses and other factors came to 212,895 or 46.2 percent, according to the data.

Meanwhile, corporate taxes paid by businesses in the top 2 percent grew to 34.33 trillion won, but the growth is far smaller than the increase in the number of companies belonging to the category, the data showed.

This suggests that the income gap between the top-ranking businesses and their immediate runners-up are quite large, pointing to the fact that a small number of large conglomerates are dominating markets, experts said. (Yonhap News)