The Effectiveness of Tax Incentive Policy on R&D Expenditures

기술개발지원 조세제도의 효과와 정책 시사점

There has been considerable controversy over the impacts of the tax credit on R&D expenditures in many countries. Korea has adopted various kinds of tax credit system to stimulate private firm' R&D expenditures. Korean government, Recently, is trying to reform tax system to reduce tax credit programmes according to Uruguay Round agreement and in line with OECD policy standards. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effectiveness of current tax credit system on technology innovation in Korea and derive some policy implications over tax reform. In this paper, firstly, I investigate the size of tax reduction effects from each program in theoretical models and simulate the actual rate of individual tax incentive to a unit of R&D expenditure. I find that theoretically the reserve fund for technology development program has given the largest tax reduction effects to private firms irrespective of the R&D incentive system reform. Tax credit on R&D expenditure also has been very effective instrument to firm's tax reduction. Secondly, I try to measure the effectiveness of tax credit through the estimation of effective margianl tax rate between with the system and without the system of credit on R&D expenditure during the tax credit reform periods. I find that the tax credit on R&D has lowered firm's investment cost since the system introduced. I also have strong results that there has been a positive relation between the fluctuation of firm's R&D expenditure and the change of effective marginal tax rate. I suggest that it is better to sustain the system of tax credit on R&D for a while to increase firm's R&D expenditure.