Hwaseong City Ranks First in Gyeonggi Province for Overdue Local Tax Collection

Hwaseong City ranked first among 31 municipalities and counties in Gyeonggi Province in settling overdue local tax payments carried forward from 2010.

By the end of February 2011, the city cleared 27.6 billion won, equivalent to 70.8% of the 39 billion won in overdue taxes carried forward from 2009, surpassing Pyeongtaek City (69.5%) and Uijeongbu City (68.6%) to achieve the top position in overdue tax settlement performance.

Kim Haeng-nim, director of the Tax Administration Division at Hwaseong City, said, "The fact that the city, which ranked fourth in Gyeonggi Province in 2009 settlement results, was able to achieve first place in 2010 is the result of all employees' efforts to secure tax revenue," and added, "In particular, the significance is great in that it contributed to stabilizing the city's finances, which faced considerable financial difficulties due to the economic downturn, resulting sharp decline in tax revenue, and aggressive large-scale projects pursued over the past year."

To organize overdue local taxes, the city operated a "Local Tax Overdue Settlement Task Force" in May 2010, headed by a deputy mayor and involving 273 personnel of grade six and above from 10 teams. The city designated a total of four months in the first and second half as a comprehensive organization period for overdue local taxes, intensively managing high-amount delinquent taxpayers with arrears exceeding 3 million won.

The overdue settlement task force encouraged tax payment through notification letters and visits to addresses, while simultaneously implementing administrative penalties such as public disclosure of names of high-amount and habitual delinquent taxpayers, travel bans, and restrictions on permitted projects, as well as strong collection measures using private collection team staff.

In particular, the city became the first in the nation to introduce a nationwide integrated delinquent tax enforcement system in May of the previous year, utilizing wireless PDAs to check automobile tax and other non-tax revenue and overdue local tax status in real time at the field.

Director Kim Haeng-nim said, "By confirming delinquency at the site and immediately impounding license plates and towing vehicles, we were able to efficiently collect automobile tax, which accounts for the largest proportion of the city's overdue taxes."

Additionally, the city operated a weekend delinquent vehicle license plate impounding team centered on large shopping malls, which are areas with dense vehicle traffic.

Separately, the city actively utilized the "pre-due collection" system to prevent overdue local taxes in advance through early debt acquisition and to increase tax revenue.

The "pre-due collection" is a system that assesses local taxes such as property tax and automobile tax before the deadline for distributing demands to secure early debt acquisition when reasons for pre-due collection arise from auction initiation decisions, etc. The city achieved collection results of approximately 43 million won in the previous year.

When authorizing land transactions, the city inquired about overdue records of sellers and buyers, collecting 1.68 billion won in overdue taxes through overdue collection and pre-due collection before real estate registration transfer, while also collecting 2.33 billion won in overdue taxes by encouraging delinquency at other permits and approvals.

As a result of these efforts, overdue taxes carried forward decreased from 39 billion won in 2009 to 36.8 billion won in 2010.

Meanwhile, through an organizational restructuring on March 14, the city separated and reorganized the Tax Administration Division into the Tax Administration Division and the Assessment Division. Within the Tax Administration Division, the collection business that had been handled by one department was divided into debt acquisition and overdue collection, and reorganized into two departments including the Collection Division and Overdue Management Division to increase work efficiency.