Major Inheritance Tax and Gift Tax Cases in 2022
Authors:   KOREAN SOCIETY OF TAX LAW, Park Hun 
Published: April 2023

There are five major Supreme Court precedents related to inheritance and gift taxes for 2022. In this article, the above five precedents were divided into facts, issues, the position of the Supreme Court, and the significance and evaluation of the judgment in chronological order.
First of all, the Supreme Court's ruling on March 11, 2022, on whether to invalidate the enforcement ordinance related to Article 41 (1) of the former Inheritance Tax and Gift Tax Act, reaffirmed the position of the Supreme Court's ruling of 2015Du45700 on April 20, 2017 and the Supreme Court's decision of 2019Du35695 on September 9, 2021. The above judgment is valid in that the scope of gifts through corporations is limited through interpretation. However, it is necessary to review whether it is right to follow the materiality and clarity test of the illegality of administrative disposition.
Second, the Supreme Court's ruling on the taxation and additional tax on the deeming property registered in name of another person to have been donated related to the acquisition of new stocks on September 15, 2022 is about the legal interpretation of the old tax and gift tax law in which the gift tax payer was in principle a trustee at the time of title trust. The target judgment judged that the case in which the title truster acquired new shares as collateral and transferred them under the same person's name, but before the transfer was made, the case in which the loan was repaid with the sale price of the existing title trust shares was not different. From the perspective of sanctions on the total amount of property that is difficult to grasp by title trust, it must be judged as the subject judgment. In addition, it was confirmed for the first time that the subject judgment should be based on the name trustee to determine whether the additional tax is imposed based on the taxpayer. If the above logic is applied to the current tax increase law, it should be judged based on the title truster who is liable for tax payment.
Third, the Supreme Court's 2022Du33712 ruling on the scope of cancellation of disposition on May 26, 2022 reaffirms the previous precedent (Supreme Court March 28, 1997) that only the portion exceeding the legitimate tax amount should be canceled if the lawsuit for cancellation of the tax disposition exists. It is reasonable in that there is no need to appeal again for parts that exceed the legitimate tax amount.
Fourth, the Supreme Court's ruling on November 10, 2022, 2020Du52214 is a precedent on whether to recognize self-gifts related to Article 45-3 of the former Inheritance Tax and Gift Tax Act (before amended by Act No. 13557 on December 15, 2015). The above ruling is the first case in which the donor and the recipient cannot be said to be the same, even though the controlling shareholders of the beneficiary corporation are shareholders of a related corporation at the same time. Given that agenda regulations that are disadvantageous to taxpayers need to be interpreted in a limited way, it is necessary to review whether the above judgment is correct.
Finally, the Supreme Court's decision on December 29, 2022 on the method of calculating gift profits according to the comprehensive exchange of stocks followed the previous precedent (the Supreme Court's decision on March 29, 2018) that gift taxes should be levied by applying Article 42 (1) 3 of the former Inheritance Tax Act. In addition, the target judgment clarified the application of Article 31-9(2)5(b) of the Enforcement Decree of the former Inheritance Tax Act (before amended by Presidential Decree No. 20621 on February 22, 2008), which is the basis for calculating the gift property value of a company that becomes a full subsidiary due to stock exchange.