Foreign firms’ entertainment costs almost triple Korean firms’ bill

Foreign firms operating in Korea spent an average of three times more on client entertainment than local firms in 2009, while their donations to good causes were just 30 percent of the latter, a report by the national tax watchdog showed on Sunday.

According to the National Tax Service report, 1,406 foreign companies in Korea spent a total of over 62 billion won ($51 million) on entertainment expenses in 2009, or average 44 million won per firm.

The amount of charitable donations made by them in the same year, however, merely marked 3.6 billion won, an average 2.6 million won per firm, according to NTS.

Among 419,420 local firms, the average expenditure for client entertainment and donations in 2009 marked 17.8 million won and 8.2 million won, respectively.

The data shows that foreign firms spent around 2.5 times more on client entertainment than local firms in 2009 but their donations was 31 percent of local ones, NTS said.

A similar trend was shown for the 2008 data. The average spending on for foreign firms’ client entertainment and donations marked 50 million won and 2.1 million won, respectively, according to the report.

By Koh Young-aah (youngaah@heraldcorp.com)