The People Power Party kept up its offensive against the government's real estate tax reform proposal Thursday, denouncing it as a "socialist tax regime."
Park Soo-young, a PPP lawmaker on the National Assembly's Finance and Economy Committee, hosted a forum at the Assembly that day under the theme "Shut up and pay — taxes that divide the people and squeeze them dry." He said the proposal represented "a revolutionary shift in the tax system toward a socialist model."
Park likened the reform plan to Pinocchio, saying President Lee Jae Myung had repeatedly promised during the presidential campaign that he would "not use taxes to control real estate," but the result was exactly that.
He also said the overhaul amounted to "payback for Gangnam votes," calling it "hate taxation" — imposing excessive levies on owners of high-priced homes in Gangnam, Seocho and Songpa simply because they do not vote for the Democratic Party of Korea. He added that complicating the tax system to make people dependent on the government's goodwill was "socialist-style taxation."
Bae Jun-young, the opposition floor manager on the Finance and Economy Committee, called the proposal "the worst tax reform in history," saying he could only wonder what the government and ruling party had considered before putting it forward.
Bae said people in their 30s were the most opposed to the overhaul, which centers on raising property holding and transaction taxes. He said the strongest resistance to the property tax hike was coming not from homeowners in their 50s and 60s but from people in their 30s, because rising jeonse and monthly rent costs would clearly leave young renters without homes.
"Policies that make it harder for young people without homes through punitive taxation must be improved," Bae said. "Together with the people, we will fix what needs fixing and block what needs to be blocked."
Fellow PPP lawmaker Yoon Sang-hyun said any administration that "unleashes a real estate tax bomb" on elderly long-term homeowners, middle-class residents of Mapo, Yongsan and Seongdong, and ordinary citizens and young people struggling with jeonse and monthly rent shortages "will inevitably face its own downfall." He added that the PPP would move quickly to craft detailed countermeasures for those harmed by the tax reform.
raining@heraldcorp.com
