Tax justice vs. Religious belief: The effects of tax professional's characteristics on the legislation of clergy taxation

Abstract

There is heated debated on clergy taxation in Korea. Against this backdrop, this study analyzed the effect of tax professionals on the prospect of the passage of clergy taxation bill. The characteristics of tax professionals are classified into whether they are tax professionals working in the field, career year and religious belief and the estimates of the prospect of the passage of clergy taxation bill is defined with 4 Likert-scaling. The result of analysis is as follows. First, tax practitioners have higher tendency of tax justice than tax professors so they believed that clergy taxation should be introduced. Second, the more career experience they have the higher their tendency of tax justice, so, they believed that tax should be imposed equally on religious people as other workers. Third, the more religious belief the respondents had the more they are likely to be against clergy taxation. This means that even tax professionals tend to be biased to religious belief between tax justice and religious belief. The analysis result of this study is significant in that it suggests the viewpoint of tax professionals on clergy taxation that is on heated debate. © Medwell Journals, 2016.